The West German Foreign Ministry insisted today that the Government is not paying the costs of defending Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi specialist in the mass murder of Jews under the Hitler regime, who is to face trial soon in Israel.
The statement was made in response to widely publicized speculations throughout Germany and Israel as to how the impoverished Eichmann family was meeting the heavy costs of defending Eichmann. It had been pointed out that the Eichmann family said it had to borrow money for the relatively small expenses involved in conferring at Cologne with Dr. Robert Servatius, the attorney who is acting as counsel for Eichmann.
Intimations that the defense bills were being met by the Foreign Ministry’s legal department have been printed in Der Spiegel, of Hamburg, Germany’s leading illustrated magazine.
According to Der Spiegel, Robert Eichmann, Adolf’s brother, said at his home in Linz, Austria, that he had not hired Dr. Servatius. Instead, Robert Eichmann is quoted as saying, Servatius “offered” his legal services. Servatius’ fee has been estimated at 100,000 deutschemarks (about $24,000). Der Spiegel says that Servatius enjoys “close relations” with the Foreign Ministry’s legal department, and that the money is “probably” coming from that source.
Persons interested in defending Eichmann, according to the magazine, “could be” officials who served in Hitler’s ministries, as well as industrialists who collaborated with SS officers in countries “once occupied by the German Army and today allied with the Federal Republic through NATO.’ It was recalled that Servatius had been one of the defenders of the Nazi war criminals convicted by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.
In Cologne, Dr. Servatius told reporters to us. that, during his recent visit to Israel, he had found Eichmann “confident of a good outcome of his trial,” The attorney said he would try to base his defense mainly on evidence that Eichmann had acted under orders. He said he had been received in Israel “with much more skepticism but without animosity. A wall of alert coolness surrounded me.” (Continued on page 4.)
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