I was just following orders: Holocaust killer Eichmann’s plea for mercy revealed

Nazi Adolf Eichmann pleaded for clemency two days before he was hanged for his part in the murder of millions of Jews, a handwritten note made public for the first time on Wednesday reveals. Eichmann, who was found guilty at a war crimes trial in 1962, said he was a “mere instrument” of the Nazi leaders. He asked then-Israeli president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to “exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out”. He claimed the judges at his trial had “made a fundamental mistake in that they are not able to empathise with the time and situation in which I found myself during the war years”.

I was not a responsible leader, and as such, do not feel myself guilty

Adolf Eichmann, in 1962 note

Eichmann was one of the architects of the Nazis’ Final Solution and he oversaw the rounding up and deportation of Jews to death camps such as Auschwitz. His plea for clemency was known but the note, written in ball-point pen, had been filed away and forgotten about since. His plea, in which he also spoke of the "unspeakable horrors which I witnessed", was unearthed when documents were being scanned for digital archiving. It was released to mark Holocaust Day, when Jews worldwide stop to remember those killed by the Nazis.

He murdered whole families and desecrated a nation. Evil had a face, a voice. And the judgement against this evil was just.

Israeli president Reuven Rivlin

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