“Eichmann Named Jews To Die”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29518, 20 May 1961, Page 14

“Eichmann Named Jews To Die”

fN^J>A.-Reutef—CopvrtpM) JERUSALEM, May 18. Adolf Eichmann personally chose candidates for the death chambers at Theresienstadt, scratching them off a master list with an “X” and marking the names of those to be spared with a circle, a witness at liis trial said today.

Vietetlav Diamant. an electrician, said he saw Eichmann in the camp in September. 1944. when more than 24,000 Jews were shipped east—to the Auschwitz gas chambers, the Associated Press reported. Asked if he could identify Eichmann now, Diamant paused to take another look at Eichmann in his glass cage and shook his head, saying: “I wouldn't recognise him today. He was in uniform then and he was young.”

Diamant said he saw the “selections” being made almost constantly before the SB. examining commission and was once hauled before Eichmann himself. After his own ordeal, Diamant said he was told by the Jewish camp elder: “You will live but your two brothers will die.” They did. in Auschwitz.

Challenged by defence counsel. Dr. Robert Servatitus, that Eichmann was in Hungary at that time, Diamant replied: “Well, he didn’t introduce himself to me personally but everybody —even the SS. officers—said he was Eichmann and that was good enough for me." Eichmann was confronted with another survivor who saw him at the height of the Jewish holocaust.

Adolf Engelstein, a native of Czechoslovakia where he was a railway construction engineer, told the Court he was thrown into Theresienstadt in 1942. On one occasion, he was put to building a portable gallows capable of hanging three men at one time.