Word: eichmanns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Adolf Eichmann was dead and his ashes thrown into the Mediterranean, but his execution will probably stir debate for years to come. The first critical postmortem came from Jewish Philosopher Martin Buber. All along, Buber had been opposed to the trial because it cast Israel in the role of both accuser and judge (he would have preferred an international tribunal). He also felt that the death penalty was wrong because no punishment could really expiate the Nazi crimes. Eichmann's execution, explained Buber last week, may only give Germany's youth an easy way of escaping the guilt...
Fearing that pressure for clemency might build up abroad, the Israeli Cabinet decided to act quickly. Before midnight, warders entered Eichmann's cell on the third floor of Ramla prison, near Tel Aviv. He had drunk half a bottle of Carmel, a dry red Israeli wine, while awaiting their arrival. To the Rev. William Hull, a Canadian-born Evangelist who had been acting as his spiritual adviser, he said: "Today I am not prepared to discuss the Bible. I don't have time to waste." Then the cell door swung open and the party marched down the corridor...
...Eichmann, clad in brown slacks and a brown, open-necked shirt, took his position on a black-painted trap door beneath a beam from which a noose dangled. His arms were bound behind him, and he refused the proffered black hood. Face white, voice rasping, he sent greetings to his wife, his family and his friends. He repeated the essence of his defense: "I had to obey the laws of war and of my flag." As the noose was placed about his neck, the condemned man spoke his last words: "After a short while, gentlemen, we all shall meet again...
Seconds later, the Israeli warder called in Hebrew, "Mukhan!" (Ready), and then "Peheel!" (Action). The trap door fell open, and Eichmann's body, plunging out of sight into the room below, swung slightly at the end of the rope. The corpse was cut down, carried to a corner of the prison grounds where, in swirls of ground fog, it was thrust into an aluminum oven with a chimney at one end. A gas fire burned for two hours, reducing Eichmann's light frame to a handful of ashes. While the body was cremated, black smoke poured into...
Long ago, the Israeli government had decided that to bury Eichmann's remains would mean desecrating Israeli soil. So, in a nickel container, Eichmann's ashes were taken 18 miles out to sea aboard an Israeli patrol boat and, as the sun rose over the mist-hung Mediterranean, scattered to the winds and water...