David Cesarani

The Argentine Connection

Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

By

The Bodley Head 579pp £25 order from our bookshop

Adolf Eichmann’s notoriety waxed as his influence waned. During the Nuremberg Trials, a succession of defendants and witnesses fingered him in absentia. It became highly convenient to displace responsibility for the persecution of the Jews onto his shoulders. Contrary to what many historians (including myself) have assumed, in the immediate postwar years Eichmann was targeted by Jewish organisations hunting Nazi criminals and wanted by both the British and the Americans. This was partly why he decided to flee his hideout in northern Germany in 1950 and make for Argentina. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'It would be nice to think that women will achieve equal pay in my lifetime, rather than to watch gloomily as stati… ,
    • In 1660, two of the signatories of King Charles I's death warrant fled across the Atlantic to New England. But were… ,
    • Howard Jacobson's sixteenth novel is 'a love story of sorts, one characterised not by physical desire or even conta… ,
    • 'The sudden immersion in the new and unfamiliar can lead people to write with a rare lack of self-consciousness' P… ,
    • 'Pools bend the rules. Clothes slip off, skin glistens, consciousness heightens. A dreamlike scenario unfolds' Jam… ,
    • 'Although he surely didn’t know W H Auden’s theory that every high C proclaims human freedom and our capacity to tr… ,
    • RT : With beginning tomorrow, we've uncovered a 1997 article from the archive reviewing 'Golf Dream… ,
    Follow Us