II The Eichmann Affair Introduction The capture of Adolf Eichmann on 11 May 1960 in Argentina embarrassed the lead- erships of the European Communist countries: Eichmann had committed his crimes mainly on the territory of Soviet-bloc countries. Immediately after his arrest, the Israeli authorities signalled that they were counting on the assistance and co-oper- ation of the Soviet, Polish, Czechoslovak and Hungarian governments in the legal proceedings. The main political decision-making bodies of the concerned parties discussed the various issues arising from Eichmann’s capture, and consulted with each other and their Soviet superiors on several occasions. The documents below were drawn up in the course of these consultations and, much like a case study, they offer insights into the mechanisms that resulted in a uniform policy strategy towards Israel and Jewish-related issues, a strategy that was adapted to Soviet interests. Furthermore, the documents also reveal the extent and nature of policy differences between the various countries, the manner in which they sought to realise their own goals, and how far they were prepared to go in pursuit of such goals. Eichmann’s capture was first mentioned in the Soviet press in a brief report on 25 May 1960.1 It was only a few days after the capture that reports began to appear in the Hungarian, Polish and Czechoslovak press. As the B’nai B’rith analysis in this volume (Document 11) shows, significant differences of emphasis existed. In the latter half of June, the UN Security Council – of which Poland was a member at the time, in addition to the Soviet Union – debated, following a request from Argentina, the breach of Argentinian sovereignty. During the debate, Soviet and Polish delegates, while strongly condemning the Western countries (above all, West-Germany) for giving refuge to war criminals, refrained from taking a clear position on the issue itself. Indeed, at the vote, representatives of both countries abstained, thus choosing not to condemn outright Israel’s actions. In response, the Israeli legate in Warsaw expressed special gratitude to the Polish government at a subsequent meeting.2 Following preliminary discussions on 27 June 1960, the Israeli government offi- cially requested the Soviet Union’s co-operation in the investigations preceding the trial.3 Similar requests were then made to the Czechoslovak, Hungarian, and Polish governments. Whereas the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia chose not to respond to this request,4 the Polish and Hungarian authorities did respond, albeit in a rather 1 For a review of the material published in the Soviet press on the Eichmann case, see Nati Cantor- ovich, Soviet Reactions to the Eichmann Trial: A Preliminary Investigation 1960–1965, Yad Vashem Studies 35:2 (2007), 103–141. See also the summary report by B’nai B’rith in this chapter (Document 11). 2 A note from the director of the 5th Department of MSZ, Z. Wolniak, on the conversation with envoy R. Amir on 24 June 1960. AMSZ z-12 w-38 t-936/314, in Rudnicki and Silber (eds), Stosunki Polsko–Izra- elskie (1945–1967), 541–542. 3 See Cantorovich, op. cit., 123. 4 Ibid, 123; and Document 6, dated 12 August 1960 in this volume. DOI 10.1515/9783110411591-003, © 2020 András Kovacs, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. 78 II The Eichmann Affair sluggish fashion.5 Meanwhile, however, consultations were being held in rapid suc- cession on what to do next. At a meeting on 19 July 1960, the foreign ministers of the European Communist countries discussed measures to be taken in connection with the Eichmann affair.6 The Communist Party leaders wished to avoid the accusation of non-co-operation in the prosecution of a major war criminal, nor did they want to compromise their general policies towards the Jewish state or, even more importantly, towards the Federal Republic of Germany by the co-operation the Israelis asked for. In the second half of the 1950s, after the West’s rejection of the proposal to estab- lish a unified, neutral and demilitarised Germany, Soviet policy-makers reacted with growing alarm to West Germany’s increasingly close relationship with the Western economic and defence alliance. The unease of the Soviet leadership was heightened by the associated spectacular improvement in West Germany’s relations with Israel, an obvious sign of which was a meeting held in New York on 14 March 1960 between West-German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion. In order to discredit the pro-Western West-German political leadership, Soviet propa- ganda characterised West Germany as a post-Nazi, revanchist state that was harbour- ing Nazi criminals in high positions. Propagandists in the other Communist countries readily repeated this line. The spectacular improvement in West-German relations with Israel seemed, however, to undermine the legitimacy of such rhetoric. It is no accident that barely five days after the initial report of Eichmann’s capture, Albert Norden, a leading functionary in the East-German Communist Party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany [Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED], wrote in an internal memo addressed to Party leader Walter Ulbricht, that it was incumbent upon the Communist countries to exploit the affair as part of the campaign against West Germany.7 Concerning Israel, since the beginning of the 1950s, Soviet propaganda had adhered to a strongly anti-Zionist line that was dismissive of the Jewish state’s right to represent Jews, or to intervene in Jewish matters outside its borders. The governments of the Soviet-bloc countries were required, therefore, to address Israeli demands for documents that would facilitate the conviction of Eichmann for crimes against Jews without compromising their anti-Fascist stance. Moreover, co-operation with Israel on this matter was not to give rise to the impression that there had been a change in the position on Israel. Four principal issues reflecting this dilemma are made mani- fest in the documents: how to avoid recognising the authority of the Israeli court; 5 See Rudnicki and Silber, op. cit., 18 July 1960, 542–543; and Document 317, dated 4 August 1960, 544. 6 The contents of East German documents on negotiations between the Communist countries con- cerning the Eichmann affair are summarized in Meining, Kommunistische Judenpolitik, 267; and Ruth Bettina Birn, Fifty Years after: A Critical Look at the Eichmann Trial, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 22 March 2011. Accessed on 10 April 2015 at http://www.thefreelibrary. com/Fifty+years+after%3a+a+critical+look+at+the+Eichmann+trial.-a0296255592. 7 See Meining, op. cit., 267. Introduction 79 whether or not to participate at an institutional level in the legal proceedings; how to provide inculpatory evidence for the prosecution without institutional involvement in the proceedings; and, finally, how to instrumentalize the trial for the purpose of denouncing West-German “neo-Fascism” and “revanchism”. The Hungarian Party bodies began to address the case in early June 1960, and it was placed on the agenda of a meeting of the Political Committee on 28 June 1960. This took place before the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Communist countries, and prior to receipt of the official Israeli note requesting co-operation (21 July 1960). From the outset, the Hungarian leadership strove to play down the Jewish aspects of the case, and to stress the general anti-Fascist ones. As János Kádár, General Secre- tary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, put it very clearly at the meeting (see Document 1): It is not a good idea to turn these awful Fascist affairs into an exclusively Jewish matter. If we do act in this affair, the decisive thing should be that Eichmann murdered hundreds of thousands of Hungarian citizens. This is where the emphasis should be, rather than turning this affair into a Jewish question. Eichmann did not only murder Jews; others were there, too. This is not a Jewish question; this is a question of Fascism and anti-Fascism. Consultations on the issue went on until late autumn. Concerning recognition of the legitimacy of the Israeli court, a Hungarian Foreign Ministry proposal drafted in preparation for the foreign ministers’ meeting on 19 July indicates that the Hungari- ans took a rather conciliatory position and were looking for a diplomatically accept- able solution (Document 4). The documents stress that according to general princi- ples, the prosecution and punishment of war criminals was viewed primarily as the prerogative of those states on whose territory and against whose citizens the crimes had been committed. Even so, the Hungarians were ready to accept the argument that the Israeli court had at least partial jurisdiction insofar as Eichmann’s crimes had affected people who subsequently became Israeli citizens or their relatives. Such a stance, it was argued, might offer a solution for several dilemmas facing the Commu- nist countries: If we accepted the partial jurisdiction of the Israeli court, we would retain legal grounds for requesting Eichmann’s extradition; at the same time, there would still be the possibility of pro- viding data concerning specific crimes committed against Israeli citizens. In such a case, we could not be subjected to the propaganda accusation that we are rendering proceedings against a war criminal more difficult. It would seem that although the political line to be followed in the affair – the need to exploit the trial for a campaign against “West-German neo-Nazism”, Zionism and the Vatican – was decided upon at the foreign ministers’ meeting, there was no final deci- sion on matters of detail. The Communist countries initially considered demanding the involvement of an international court, or the extradition of Eichmann.