Former Nazis had tried twice to smuggle a razor blade to the late Adolf Eichmann, while the latter awaited hanging at Ramleh Prison, it was revealed here last night by Attorney General Gideon Hausner, chief prosecutor of the Eichmann trial.
In one case, Mr. Hausner disclosed, Germans now in Australia, who lived formerly in the Palestinian colonies of Sarona and Wilhelma, sent Eichmann a postcard, advising him to interest himself in philately, and to be sure to examine the stamp on the card. The Israeli security officers followed the advice–examining the stamp and finding a thin blade under the postage.
Another effort was made to get a blade to Eichmann by inserting the bin-edged metal between the wrappings of a box of matches. The senders had apparently hoped Eichmann would kill himself with the blade to avoid hanging.
One of Eichmann’s fictions, which was exposed as false after his arrest, was that he had, had been born at the Sarona settlement in pre-Israel Palestine. The Germans who had settled both Sarona and Wilkelma left the country immediately after Israel was established, in 1948, most of the moving en masse to Australia.
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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.