No Time to Waste

The government of Israel last week executed Adolf Eichmann with all deliberate speed.

His day in court had lasted four months; after he was found guilty of "contributing" to the Nazi mass murder of 6,000,000 Jews, his appeal of the verdict was considered for nine weeks by the Israeli Supreme Court, and then denied, with the remark that even death was not an adequate penalty for Eichmann. As a last recourse, Eichmann made a personal plea for clemency to Israel's President Izhak Ben-Zvi. Within 34 hours a prison commissioner told Eichmann that his plea had been rejected. He grimaced slightly, said, "Jawohl."

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 and into a small 10-ft. by 10-ft. room.

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. Such is the fate of all men. I have lived believing in God and, believing in God, I die."

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 the sky. None of the watching officials and reporters said a word, but the memory of the evil holocausts of Auschwitz was inevitable.

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.

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