London lawyers request Eichmann journals for Holocaust denial suit;
A-G wants to cooperate

http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=14&datee=02/27/00&id=70399

By Dalia Shehori Ha'aretz Correspondent

Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein will hold an urgent meeting today to
discuss a request from defense lawyers in a Holocaust denial defamation suit
in London. The lawyers have asked the State of Israel to supply copies of
writings by Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann months before his 1962
execution in Israel.

The defamation trial has been brought by controversial British historian
David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt, a scholar in modern Jewish and
Holocaust Studies at Emory University who branded Irving a "dangerous
spokesman in the service of Holocaust deniers." Irving is suing Lipstadt,
and Penguin Books publishers who released her volume "Denying the Holocaust:
the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." Irving alleges that Lipstadt's
book caused irreparable harm to his reputation as a historian, causing him
considerable financial damage.

Irving denies that millions of Jews were systematically murdered by the
Nazis. He claims that Hitler didn't know about the genocide until the final
stages of the Second World War.

Lipstadt's defense attorney, Richard Rempton, asked Rubinstein last week for
a copy of Eichmann's journal entries. These are documents written by
Eichmann while imprisoned in Israel, waiting for the verdict in his trial.
The documents have been kept at Israel's state archives.

Transcript copies of the Eichmann diaries are near completion; and should a
decision be reached today during the attorney general's consultations to
assent to the requests forwarded by Lipstadt's defense, a transcript will be
dispatched urgently to London.

Legal sources estimated last night that Rubinstein is inclined to agree to
Lipstadt's request, as the attorney general attributes cardinal importance
to the struggle against Holocaust denial. While serving in the past as
Cabinet Secretary, Rubinstein chaired a public forum which kept track of
anti-Semitism around the globe.

According to the sources, Rubinstein regards the Eichmann document request
as an opportunity to play a constructive part in effort to combat Holocaust
denial. In recent weeks world Jewish organizations have been critical of
Israel's silence during the Irving defamation trial.

The discussion today will apparently involve authorities with whom
Rubinstein has consulted in the past in connection with the Eichmann
documents. These include Prof. Avatar Friesal (from the state archives),
Holocaust scholar Prof. Yehuda Bauer, former Supreme Court President Moshe
Landau, retired Supreme Court judge Gabriel Bach (who worked with the
prosecution during the Eichmann trial), and others.

The Eichmann journals divide into three parts. Eichmann devotes the first
section to self-defense, distancing himself from the final solution. In the
second section, entitled the "false idols," Eichmann perorates about
responsibility for the murder of Jews, concluding that the Nazi regime is to
blame, writing that "ultra-nationalism is the largest catastrophe known to
all peoples." The third, short section involves "philosophical reflections."

Former Supreme Court Justice Bach, who read the Eichmann documents in their
entirety, says that they include no special, or new, material. He says that
the journals do not deny the Holocaust. They are, according to Bach, an
attempt on Eichmann's part to mitigate the onus of the charges made against
him. Bach adds that Eichmann made a similar effort while on the stand in the
trial, so the written journals do not convey any new evidence.

Fragments from the documents were published in the past in a book by Gideon
Housner.

==


ISRAEL: Israel may offer Eichmann diary for UK libel case. By Megan Goldin

02/27/2000 Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2000.

JERUSALEM, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Israel may hand over unpublished memoirs of
executed Nazi official Adolf Eichmann as evidence in a British libel suit
seen by many Jews as putting the Holocaust itself on trial, an official said
on Sunday.

Controversial British historian David Irving brought the suit against U.S.
author Deborah Lipstadt , who in a 1995 book on attempts to argue that the
Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews never took place called Irving "a
dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial".

"We have a request from the defence team," a Justice Ministry official said,
adding that Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein would meet legal experts
later on Sunday to decide whether to hand the memoirs to Lipstadt 's lawyers.

Israel has kept the memoirs under lock and key for decades. It recently said
it favoured publishing the papers, which Eichmann wrote by hand from a
prison cell before he was hanged in 1962, the only execution ever held in
the Jewish state.

Eichmann drew up plans that made feasible Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution" -
the wartime annihilation of millions of Jews.

The official said lawyers for Lipstadt and publisher Penguin Books wanted
the memoirs as evidence against Irving's charges that he was slandered and
his reputation damaged by her book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing
Assault on Truth and Memory".

A London court has been hearing Irving's suit against the American history
professor since January. The case is expected to last three months.

Jewish leaders have voiced fears that a victory for Irving - who rejects as
vastly exaggerated the commonly accepted figure of six million Jewish dead -
could lend credence to neo-Nazis who contend the Holocaust never took place.

Lipstadt 's book links Irving with the growing popularity of white
supremacists in the United States and neo-Nazis in Europe.

Irving, author of a number of hotly debated books on the Holocaust, told
Reuters earlier this month that the notorious Auschwitz death camp was a
type of "Disneyland", built by Polish communists after World War Two to
attract tourists.

In 1990, Irving was convicted by a German court for telling a public meeting
in Munich that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, which he described
as "a very brutal slave labour camp" where around 100,000 people died.

Israeli historian Roni Stauber, who has studied Irving and the phenomena of
Holocaust denial, said that by releasing the Eichmann memoirs Israel would
show that the Nazi annihilation campaign against the Jews was well documented.

"This is always the claim of the Holocaust deniers - that there is a
conspiracy to hide the truth," Stauber said.

"So if Israel doesn't give permission to use the writings of Eichmann, they
can claim there was something there to prove that there wasn't a Holocaust."

The handful of historians who have been allowed to study the memoirs say
they found nothing new in Eichmann's scrawled account of his role in the
annihilation of six million Jews during World War Two.

Eichmann was kidnapped by Mossad secret agents from his Argentine hideaway
and brought to Israel for trial in 1960.

During the trial, Eichmann sat in a bullet-proof glass booth as more than a
hundred witnesses testified against him.

The court rejected Eichmann's defence of his actions, that he was nothing
more than a cog in the giant Nazi death machine.

##


Eichman Papers Called for Holocaust Denial Lawsuit
http://www.jta.org/
Jewish Telegraphic Agency 02.27.00

Attorneys in a Holocaust denial defamation lawsuit in London have asked
Israel for copies of the journal written by Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann
prior to his execution in Israel in 1962. The journals would be used in the
defense of Jewish scholar Deborah Lipstadt in the defamation suit brought
against her by Holocaust revisionist David Irving. Israel's attorney general
is to hold an urgent discussion on whether to hand over the journals. The
attorney general is simultaneously considering a request from Eichmann's son
to receive the journal, and whether to hand them over to a scholarly
institution that would publish them along with commentary.

##


Israel to decide whether to make Eichmann diaries public

02/27/2000 Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Copyright (c) 2000, dpa

Jerusalem (dpa) - Israeli Attorney-General Eliakim Rubinstein is to meet
with advisors to decide whether to make public journals written by Nazi war
criminal Adolf Eichmann while in an Israeli prison, the Yediot Aharanot
daily reported Sunday.

The paper said that publication of the diaries, which do not deny the
Holocaust, would help American historian Deborah Lipstadt , who is being
sued for libel after she termed controversial British historian David Irving
``a dangerous spokesman in the service of Holocaust deniers''.

The trial is currently underway in London.

Eichmann's son asked Israel to give him the diaries last year, but the
decision was deferred. According to Yediot, Israeli Holocaust historian fear
the Eichmann journals, if published verbatim, could mislead the public into
accepting Eichmann's own version of events he helped orchestrate.

Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews
during World War II, escaped from Europe after the war, but was caught by
Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960.

Brought to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity, he was found
guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1962.

At his trial and in his journal Eichmann tried to play down his role in the
Holocaust, saying the Nazi regime was to blame.

Lipstadt 's defense attorney, Richard Rempton, asked Rubinstein, for a copy
the journals, which are stored in Israel's state archives.

Lipstadt 's defence rests this week, and she thinks the diaries could
provide a fitting conclusion to her case.

Irving, who in the past has denied that millions of Jews were systematically
murdered by the Nazis in World War II, and has also maintained that Hitler
did not know of the genocide while it was taking place, says Lipstadt 's
accusations against him caused him considerable financial damage and
irrepairable harm to his reputation as a historian.

Copyright (c) 2000, dpa

27-02-00 1128EST

==


HA'ARETZ - Eichmann Papers to Lipstadt

Eichmann journals being made public
http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/htmls/kat11_6.htm
By Dalia Shehori Ha'aretz Correspondent

The journals of the executed Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, which he
wrote in an Israeli prison at the beginning of the 1960s, are being made
public.

The state archives will transfer copies of the journals, printed and on
diskette, to the representative for Professor Deborah Lipstadt in London,
Richard Rampton. They will help Professor Libstadt's defense in her trial
for defaming a Holocaust denier.

The charges were brought against her by historian David Irving, who claims
that Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, have caused considerable
harm to his reputation and finances by labeling him a "dangerous spokesman
in the service of Holocaust deniers."

Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein decided to hand over the material last
night after urgent discussions in response to Rampton's request. The defense
is expected to conclude its case by the weekend.

In yesterday's discussion, it was said that a positive reply to Rampton's
request would mean full disclosure of the journals to the public. Therefore
it would be better if the delivery of the material was done in parallel with
a public disclosure in Jerusalem.

The journals should help the defense case by refuting Irving's central claim
that Hitler didn't know about the "Final Solution" until the final stages of
the war.

==


http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/02/28/News/News.3271.html

JERUSALEM POST -  Eichmann papers to Lipstadt

Eichmann memoir to help fight Holocaust denier

By Jerusalem Post Staff

JERUSALEM (February 28) - The memoir written in an Israeli jail by Final
Solution architect Adolf Eichmann will be made public and turned over to
lawyers for American professor Deborah Lipstadt, to use in defending her
against a London libel suit by Holocaust revisionist David Irving, a special
Justice Ministry panel decided last night.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak also approved the decision, believing it to be
part of the struggle against Holocaust denial.

"There is importance, as part of the State of Israel's historic duty, in
publishing the memoir," Justice Ministry spokesman Ido Baum wrote in a
statement.

"It was found that legally the state archive is permitted to do so. It was
also decided by all the participants that it would be right to turn over a
copy of the memoir as quickly as possible to the lawyers for Prof. Lipstadt,
for the purposes of her defense in the suit filed by a Holocaust denier."

He added that the memoir, which was typewritten into the state archive from
the original hand-written version, would also be made available to the public.

Last August, the Justice Ministry said the government intended to see to it
that the memoir was published in full by German scholars together with
"commentary and appropriate accompanying material." A lawyer representing
one of Eichmann's two sons officially asked the government for a copy of the
manuscript at that time.

Eichmann, an SS officer responsible for the deportation of the Jews from
Germany and Austria and later put in charge of the Final Solution, was
kidnapped from Argentina and put on trial for war crimes in Israel. He was
found guilty and executed in May 1962. During his trial, Eichmann received
permission to write his memoirs.

However, his prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, advised prime minister David
Ben-Gurion not to allow them to be published. Instead, they were deposited
in the state archives and all but forgotten for many years.

The request from Lipstadt's lawyers speeded up the decision to publish them,
the ministry said.

Among those on the committee were retired Supreme Court president Moshe
Landau; retired Supreme Court justice Gavriel Bach; state archivist Prof.
Evyatar Prizel; and Holocaust researcher Prof. Yehuda Bauer.

==

Israel to release Eichmann memoirs to aid in Holocaust denial trial

By LAURIE COPANS

02/27/2000 Associated Press Newswires
Copyright 2000.
The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel announced Sunday that it will release the memoirs of
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and offer them in defense of an American
academic facing a libel suit for saying a British writer denied the Holocaust.

Israel will give the public access to the 1,300-page, handwritten papers,
penned in an Israeli prison and kept under wraps for nearly 40 years, the
Justice Ministry said in a statement. In the memoirs, the overseer of the
Nazi death machine reportedly says the mass killing of Jews during the
Holocaust was the worst crime in human history.

Israel had agreed in August to publish the diary after one of Eichmann 's
sons, Dieter, threatened legal action to claim the book as family property.
Only a few scholars have seen it.

Israeli officials had originally planned to compile the papers and let a
German research institution prepare them for scholarly publication. The
publication of the uncensored, untranslated memoirs has been a key demand of
Holocaust historians.

According to the decision Sunday by Israeli Attorney General Elyakim
Rubinstein, the public will be allowed to obtain typed versions of the
memoirs and view the original, hand-written notes in the state archive,
subject to conditions set by archive officials.

"It has been decided that there is importance, as part of the historical
commitment of the state of Israel, to let the memoirs be viewed by the
public," read the release. The diary was expected to be released in the
coming days.

A copy will also be given to American author Deborah Lipstadt "in her
defense of a suit by a Holocaust denier," read the statement, released after
a meeting of top judges, legal officials and historians at Rubinstein's office.

British writer David Irving is suing Lipstadt for libel in Britain for
writing in a 1994 book that he denied the Holocaust and distorted the truth
of what happened in World War II.

Irving says he does not deny that Jews were killed by the Nazis, but
challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths.

Israel hopes that publication of the memoirs will reveal proof of the Nazi
machine to disprove Irving's case. Irving has in the trial disputed
historically-accepted witness accounts that hundreds of thousands were
gassed to death at Auschwitz.

Eichmann wrote the diary while in jail from 1961 to 1962, after Israeli
agents captured him in Argentina and brought him to trial in Israel.

In what appeared to be a first draft of the diary, 127 pages sent to Germany
after Eichmann 's execution and released last year include complaints about
an unfairly strict upbringing, descriptions of his inability to disobey an
order and thoughts on the meaning of life.

Eichmann wrote in the final copy that the killing of the Jews was the worst
crime in the history of mankind, Israel radio reported. Scholars who have
seen the memoir say that it repeats arguments Eichmann made at his trial,
insisting that he was only a mid-level official following orders.

Lipstadt , a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and her co-defendant,
Penguin Books, deny libel.

==


ROUNDUP: Israel to make Eichman's diaries public

02/27/2000 Deutsche Presse-Agentur Copyright (c) 2000, dpa

Jerusalem (dpa) - Israeli legal authorities decided Sunday to make public
the prison diaries of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichman.

The diaries will be made available to the public at the Zionist Archives in
Jerusalem.

Israel Radio reported that Israeli Attorney General Eliakim Rubinstein
reached the decision after a meeting with several legal experts, including
retired judges.

The Eichman family has claimed ownership of the diaries written by Adolf
Eichman shortly after being captured in Argentina and transported to Israel
until the day he was executed in Israel following a death penalty by a
special war-crimes court.

By making the diaries public, Israel rules out any copyright claims for them.

The Yediot Aharanot daily reported Sunday that publication of the diaries,
which do not deny the Holocaust, would help American historian Deborah
Lipstadt , who is being sued for libel after she termed controversial
British historian David Irving ``a dangerous spokesman in the service of
Holocaust deniers''.

The trial is currently underway in London.

Eichmann 's son asked Israel to give him the diaries last year, but the
decision was deferred.

According to Yediot, Israeli Holocaust historian fear the Eichmann journals,
if published verbatim, could mislead the public into accepting Eichmann 's
own version of events he helped orchestrate.

Eichmann , one of the major organizers of the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews
during World War II, escaped from Europe after the war, but was caught by
Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960.

Brought to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity, he was found
guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1962.

At his trial and in his journal Eichmann tried to play down his role in the
Holocaust, saying the Nazi regime was to blame.

Lipstadt 's defense attorney, Richard Rempton, asked Rubinstein, for a copy
the journals, which are stored in Israel's state archives.

Lipstadt 's defence rests this week, and she thinks the diaries could
provide a fitting conclusion to her case.

Irving, who in the past has denied that millions of Jews were systematically
murdered by the Nazis in World War II, and has also maintained that Hitler
did not know of the genocide while it was taking place, says Lipstadt 's
accusations against him caused him considerable financial damage and
irrepairable harm to his reputation as a historian.

Copyright (c) 2000, dpa

27-02-00 1626EST

==


New York Times - Associated Press 02.27.00

Eichmann Papers to Lipstadt

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Israel-Eichmann.html

Israel To Release Eichmann Memoirs

Filed at 7:37 p.m. EST

By The Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel announced Sunday that it will release the memoirs
of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and offer them in defense of an American
professor facing a libel suit for accusing a British writer of denying the
Holocaust.

Israel will give the public access to the 1,300-page, handwritten papers,
penned in an Israeli prison and kept under wraps for nearly 40 years, the
Justice Ministry said in a statement. In the memoirs, the overseer of the
Nazi death machine reportedly says the mass killing of Jews during the
Holocaust was the worst crime in human history.

Israel had agreed in August to publish the diary after one of Eichmann's
sons, Dieter, threatened legal action to claim the book as family property.
Only a few scholars have seen it.

Israeli officials had originally planned to compile the papers and let a
German research institution prepare them for scholarly publication. The
publication of the uncensored, untranslated memoirs has been a key demand of
Holocaust historians.

According to the decision Sunday by Israeli Attorney General Elyakim
Rubinstein, the public will be allowed to obtain typed versions of the
memoirs and view the original, handwritten notes in the state archive,
subject to conditions set by archive officials.

``It has been decided that there is importance, as part of the historical
commitment of the state of Israel, to let the memoirs be viewed by the
public,'' read the release. The diary was expected to be released in the
coming days.

A copy will also be given to American author Deborah Lipstadt ``in her
defense of a suit by a Holocaust denier,'' read the statement, released
after a meeting of top judges, legal officials and historians at
Rubinstein's office.

British writer David Irving is suing Lipstadt for libel in Britain for
writing in a 1994 book that he denied the Holocaust and distorted the truth
of what happened in World War II.

Irving says he does not deny that Jews were killed by the Nazis, but
challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths.

Under British law, a libel claimant only needs to prove that his reputation
has been damaged. Truth is not necessarily a defense.

Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and her co-defendant,
Penguin Books, deny libel.

Israel hopes that publication of the memoirs will reveal proof of the Nazi
machine to disprove Irving's case. Irving has in the trial disputed
historically-accepted witness accounts that hundreds of thousands were
gassed to death at Auschwitz.

Eichmann wrote the diary while in jail from 1961 to 1962, after Israeli
agents captured him in Argentina and brought him to trial in Israel.

In what appeared to be a first draft of the diary, 127 pages sent to Germany
after Eichmann's execution and released last year include complaints about
an unfairly strict upbringing, descriptions of his inability to disobey an
order and thoughts on the meaning of life.

Eichmann wrote in the final copy that the killing of the Jews was the worst
crime in the history of mankind, Israel radio reported. Scholars who have
seen the memoir say that it repeats arguments Eichmann made at his trial,
insisting that he was only a midlevel official following orders.


REUTERS 02.27.00

Sunday February 27 3:53 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000227/wl/israel_eichmann_1.html
Israel Offers Eichmann Diary in Holocaust Case

By Megan Goldin

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Sunday it would hand over unpublished
memoirs of executed Nazi official Adolf Eichmann for use as evidence in a
British libel suit seen by many Jews as putting the Holocaust itself on trial.

Controversial British historian David Irving brought the suit against U.S.
author Deborah Lipstadt, who in a 1995 book called him ``a dangerous
spokesman for Holocaust denial.''

Lipstadt's book is a study of attempts to argue that the Nazi campaign to
exterminate Jews never took place.

Israel's Justice Ministry said the defense team in the libel case had asked
for the memoirs to be released and a decision to hand them over was taken at
a meeting on Sunday between Israeli Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein and
Israeli legal experts.

``All the participants agreed on the importance, as part of Israel's
historical duty, of allowing the public to examine the memoirs,'' a Justice
Ministry spokesman said.

``They also decided unanimously that it would be right to hand over as soon
as possible a copy of the manuscript to a representative of Professor
Lipstadt so she can defend herself in a lawsuit brought by a Holocaust
denier,'' he said.

Israel has kept the memoirs under lock and key for decades. It recently said
it favored publishing the papers, which Eichmann wrote by hand from a prison
cell before he was hanged in 1962, the only execution ever held in the
Jewish state.

The Justice Ministry spokesman said the public would soon be able to examine
the manuscripts at the State Archives.

Eichmann drew up plans that made feasible Adolf Hitler's ''Final Solution''
-- the wartime annihilation of millions of Jews.

The official said lawyers for Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books
wanted the memoirs as evidence against Irving's charges that he was
slandered and his reputation damaged by her book, ``Denying the Holocaust:
The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.''

A London court has been hearing Irving's suit against the American history
professor since January. The case is expected to last three months.

Jewish Leaders Fear Irving Victory

Jewish leaders have voiced fears that a victory for Irving -- who rejects as
vastly exaggerated the commonly accepted figure of six million Jewish dead
-- could lend credence to neo-Nazis who contend that the Holocaust never
took place.

Lipstadt's book links Irving with the growing popularity of white
supremacists in the United States and neo-Nazis in Europe.

Irving, author of a number of hotly debated books on the Holocaust, told
Reuters earlier this month that the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in southern
Poland was a type of ''Disneyland,'' built by Polish communists after World
War Two to attract tourists.

Irving was convicted by a German court in 1990 for telling a public meeting
in Munich that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, which he described
as ``a very brutal slave labor camp'' where around 100,000 people died.

The handful of historians who have been allowed to study the Eichmann
memoirs say they found nothing new in his scrawled account of his role in
the annihilation of Jews.

Eichmann was kidnapped by Mossad secret agents from an Argentine hideaway
and brought to Israel for trial in 1960.

During the trial, Eichmann sat in a bullet-proof glass booth as more than a
hundred witnesses testified against him.

He argued that he was nothing more than a cog in the giant Nazi death machine.

==

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