Evidence Shows Eichmann Prevented Sending 40,000 Jews to Switzerland

The prosecution in the trial of Adolf Eichmann submitted documented evidence today that Eichmann frustrated a plan approved by Hitler through which Switzerland was to have accepted 40,000 Hungarian Jews for transit to other countries.

Assistant Attorney General Gavriel Bach presented the documents, considered to be the most damaging against Eichmann since the trial began April 11. One document was a cable from Veesenmayer, the German Foreign Ministry representative in Budapest, to the effect that the Swiss Legation had already started making arrangements for the acceptance of 7,700 Jewish families, plus 1,000 children for whom certificates were obtainable for Palestine.

In the cable, Veesenmayer was cited as reporting that Eichmann intervened in the project with the assertion that Hitler had not approved it and that he (Eichmann) would urge Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler to convince Hitler to oppose it.

The cable also contained a statement that if Hitler would not cancel the project, Eichmann was planning measures to frustrate its implementation. The measures were listed as speeding up deportations, particularly of the Jews selected for the Switzerland escape, urging a slowdown in the rate of grants of German transit visas for passage to Switzerland and “technical” delays of the trains to Switzerland.

The content of the cable was substantiated by another document, a letter from Eichmann to Rolf Guenther, his Gestapo superior, in which Eichmann said that efforts were being made to delay the departure to Switzerland by the withholding of transit visas.

The next document was a postwar deposition from Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann’s top aides, that Eichmann ordered his office staff to keep secret Himmler’s order to halt all deportations.