Abroad: 50 Years After Trial, Eichmann Secrets Live On

The 50th anniversary of Eichmann’s trial this spring has cast the early days of the postwar Federal Republic in a fresh historical light. Those were the years when the new West Germany held itself up as the cure for what ailed a humiliated and broken nation, and as an alternative to the Communist East.

That era was also the populist heyday of the organization man. And the classic portrait of Eichmann as a soulless cog in the machinery of totalitarianism, a petty bureaucrat acting out of “blind obedience,” in the incredulous description by Moshe Landau, the presiding judge at the trial — who, as it happens, died just the other day, at 99 — has also come to seem a sacred but dubious shibboleth of the time.

A different picture of the man, and the period, has begun to circulate. Bild, the German tabloid, having recently forced the BND through the courts to release a few files, uncovered an index card from 1952 that made clear that West German intelligence officials already knew Eichmann was living in Argentina. The card listed his alias there, or something close to it, and a contact who edited a well-known Nazi magazine in Buenos Aires, Der Weg.

West German authorities had claimed they had no clue where Eichmann went until the Israelis found him. Then in 2006 declassified C.I.A. documents showed they knew as early as 1956. Now it turns out they knew even earlier. Considering that Eichmann’s wife and children settled in Argentina in 1952 — living openly with Eichmann under their own names, in a house that was under his name — it seems remarkable today that authorities got away with claiming ignorance for so long.

Germans reacted to the Bild article with a familiar shake of the head that, here, implies not a lack of concern but stoic resignation. The bigger kerfuffle, though, has been around the more than 4,000 pages of undisclosed intelligence about Eichmann.

“The postwar period remains sensitive,” explained Bettina Stangneth, the author of a new German book on Eichmann, “because many Germans want to preserve the positive image they have of that time.”

She meant the postwar years of Konrad Adenauer’s chancellorship and the so-called economic miracle. Few West German officials, or for that matter American ones, had any interest in hunting for Eichmann during the 1950s, Ms. Stangneth noted. Both countries employed ex-Nazis in government jobs. Eichmann had beans to spill. Better to leave him in obscurity, they figured.

That Adenauer’s close adviser, Hans Globke, helped strip Jews of their rights under the Nazis was a widely publicized scandal, but it only distracted from the larger shame that countless lesser-known Nazis lived and worked under the radar throughout West German society, including in the ranks of the BND.

A new exhibition about the trial at the Topography of Terror Museum here devotes a section to reappraising the work of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, pointing out that she failed to attend much of the trial, never saw Eichmann cross-examined and thus didn’t witness his “just following orders” defense crumble.

“Neither perverted nor sadistic,” is how Arendt described Eichmann, but “terribly and terrifyingly normal.” In Argentina Eichmann had been interviewed by an ex-Nazi, Willem Sassen, who, along with some other ex-Nazis there, dreamed about exonerating Hitler and inaugurating a Fourth Reich. Confronted with some of the Sassen material at the trial, Eichmann was exposed. He had told Sassen that he only regretted not having murdered more Jews. “I could have done more and should have done more,” he said.

The German historian Ulrich Herbert, during a recent interview with a German newspaper, described Eichmann as typical of many high-ranking Nazis, priding himself on being “an anti-Semite without anti-Semitic emotions.” Historians like Mr. Herbert have increasingly been questioning Arendt’s iconic concept of the “banality of evil.” As an underling to ultimate Nazi policy makers like Himmler and Heydrich, Eichmann was following orders, but was also “convinced of his actions,” Mr. Herbert insisted.

 

South Africa Exults Abroad but Frets at Home

It was a moment of international triumph, with Mr. Zuma representing his country — indeed, his continent — in such an elite club while larger developing nations like Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey stood on the sidelines.

But this week, he is back home and facing the kind of news of self-dealing and misconduct by public officials that has eroded the confidence South Africans have in their own government and political parties — the foundations of this fledgling democracy.

With the country preparing for local elections on May 18, the cabinet member Mr. Zuma chose to oversee local government, Sicelo Shiceka, is now embroiled in scandalous reports about his profligate living at public expense. Mr. Zuma announced Sunday that he was awaiting an explanation from Mr. Shiceka that has yet to come.

“It’s this flaunting of inequality and conspicuous consumption that people get agitated about,” said Ben Roberts, a researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council, which recently conducted a survey of South Africans documenting widespread disillusionment with local government.

Parliamentary leaders of Mr. Zuma’s party, the African National Congress, have asked for independent investigators in the public protector’s office to find out whether Mr. Shiceka spent more than $50,000 of taxpayers’ money to fly to Switzerland and stay in five-star hotels while visiting his girlfriend, a flight attendant, who was jailed there on drug charges, as The Sunday Times of South Africa reported.

In a follow-up article on Sunday, the newspaper reported that municipal trucks were delivering water to the building site of Mr. Shiceka’s new home in the poorest district in the Eastern Cape. His home was also slated to be among the first to get electricity.

“What a disgrace!” shouted the headline. “Minister builds emperor’s palace in South Africa’s poorest village.”

Corruption and great disparities in wealth are hardly uncommon among the other BRICS countries. But the lack of basic services has touched a particular nerve here. People in Mr. Shiceka’s home district had been protesting the poor quality of water and sewerage services. And it was precisely these issues that led poor people in Ficksburg, a town in the Free State, to take to the streets last week in a protest that ended in tragedy.

SABC, the state broadcaster, showed police officers in Ficksburg assaulting an unarmed, shirtless protester named Andries Tatane, 33, and thwacking his torso with batons. Mr. Tatane then looked down at his chest, streaming with blood. A haunting photograph shows him lying wounded in the arms of a friend whose face is contorted in anguish. Mr. Tatane died minutes later.

“The post-mortem showed he died of gunshot wounds,” said Moses Dlamini, spokesman for the Independent Complaints Directorate, which investigates police brutality. “And he had bruises which indicated he was assaulted.”

Two police officers have been charged with the murder and four others with assault, but not before enraged residents of Mr. Tatane’s township set fire to two government buildings.

An African National Congress spokesman, Jackson Mthembu, described the attack on Mr. Tatane as reminiscent of “apartheid-era strong-arm tactics” — a remarkable statement considering that the A.N.C. itself led the struggle against apartheid and has governed the country, and overseen its police force, since 1994.

The so-called service delivery protests, a phenomenon across the country, provide signs of the simmering discontent among many South Africans about how long it is taking to translate the gains of freedom into material progress. Even as South Africa takes center stage with the world’s most prominent developing nations, a majority of young black South Africans are jobless. Poverty remains widespread.

A nationwide survey of?about 3,200 South Africans age 16 and older, sponsored by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission, found that South Africans were most dissatisfied with local government performance on job creation, crime and housing.

The survey, released last week, documented an erosion of trust at all levels of government, with the lowest approval level — 38 percent — reserved for local government, down from a high of 55 percent in 2004.

Politicians rated even lower. Only 27 percent of South Africans trusted them when the survey was conducted in the final months of 2010.

The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance — widely perceived as dominated by whites — has sought to attract more black support by highlighting its strong record in running the city of Cape Town. Helen Zille, the former journalist who leads the party, has seized on the killing of Mr. Tatane as emblematic of how the A.N.C. has “become disconnected from the people it is supposed to serve.”

But the loyalty of voters to the A.N.C., the party of Nelson Mandela, remains deep, and the survey found that those who were most unhappy with government were also the ones who said they were least likely to vote. So the question of whether discontent leads to change in the ballot box remains open.