Com­ment: We have exam­ined the refusal of the Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice to release its files on Adolf Eich­mann, the archi­tect of Hitler’s exter­mi­na­tion of the Jews.

Hav­ing osten­si­bly reversed its posi­tion, the BND–successor to the Rein­hard Gehlen spy outfit–withheld more then 1,000 pages from jour­nal­ist Gabriele Weber (who sued to obtain their release). Of the 2,400 pages that she did receive , much of the infor­ma­tion was redact­ed.

As dis­cussed in the post linked above, Eich­mann was part of a Third Reich gone under­ground. An uncen­sored release of infor­ma­tion about his career would expose much about the post­war sur­vival of the Third Reich and the col­lab­o­ra­tion of West­ern democ­ra­cies with it.

Note that Fritz Bauer, the Ger­man pros­e­cu­tor who tipped off the Israelis about Eich­man­n’s where­abouts, was mur­dered by Nazi agents, work­ing for the secu­ri­ty divi­sion of the Bor­mann Cap­i­tal Net­work.

Excerpt:  “. . . Israeli agents who move too close­ly to these cen­ters of pow­er are elim­i­nat­ed. One such ter­mi­na­tion was Fritz Bauer, for­mer­ly attor­ney gen­er­al for the State of Hesse in Frank­furt, a sur­vivor of Auschwitz and the man who tipped off the Israeli Mossad about the pres­ence of Adolf Eich­mann in Buenos Aires, who was killed on orders of Gen­er­al Mueller. . . .Mueller’s ruth­less­ness even today is what deters Artur Axmann from alter­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny that he saw Bor­mann lying dead on the road­way the night of their escape from the Fuehrerbunker, May 1–2, 1945. . . .To this day, Axmann, the only so-called liv­ing wit­ness to the ‘death’ of Bor­mann in Berlin, knows his life is in jeop­ardy if he revers­es him­self. Gen­er­al Mueller is thor­ough and has a long mem­o­ry, and for a Nazi such as Axmann to go against Mueller’s orig­i­nal direc­tive would make him a trai­tor; ret­ri­bu­tion would sure­ly fol­low. . . .” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 289–290.)

“Heav­i­ly Cen­sored Files on Eich­mann Released” by David Ris­ing [AP]; The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 9/8/2010.

Excerpt: Ger­many’s intel­li­gence ser­vice has turned over thou­sands of files on top Nazi Adolf Eich­man­n’s where­abouts after World War II to a jour­nal­ist who sued for them. But with so many pas­sages blacked out and pages miss­ing, she’s tak­ing the mat­ter back to court.

An attor­ney for free­lance reporter Gabriele Weber said Tues­day he was con­fi­dent that she would win greater access even­tu­al­ly, even though Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s office has argued that some Eich­mann files should stay secret.

Last week, Weber went to see the gov­ern­ment files on the man known as the “archi­tect of the Holo­caust” for coor­di­nat­ing the Naz­i’s geno­cide pol­i­cy. She was sur­prised to find some 1,000 pages miss­ing, despite a fed­er­al court’s order in April that the intel­li­gence agency, the BND, could not keep all of the doc­u­ments secret.

Merkel’s office, which over­sees the BND, argued in a fil­ing last month with the Fed­er­al Admin­is­tra­tive Court in Leipzig that the 3,400 files had been exam­ined and that it had been deter­mined that some should remain with­held for a vari­ety of rea­son. . . .

. . .  Even though the basics of Eich­man­n’s sto­ry after the war are well known — he fled Ger­many, was cap­tured in Argenti­na by Israel’s Mossad in 1960, then hanged after tri­al in Jerusalem in 1962 — Weber hopes the files will shed more light on miss­ing pieces of the puz­zle. Who helped him escape? How much did Ger­many know about where he was? Is there more to the sto­ry of his cap­ture?

While she received some 2,400 pages, anoth­er 1,000 — cru­cial­ly about the years before Eich­mann was cap­tured by Israel — were held back, she said. Of the pages she did receive, much of the infor­ma­tion was blacked out.