Mercy, Mercy Me

Ricardo Klement AKA Eichmann's passport

Adolf Eichmann’s request for mercy has just been made public.

Why does his plea for lenience offend me so? Don’t we all deserve understanding and compassion?

At his trial, Eichmann put out that he was no more than a simple, low-level travel agent. A grunt who merely arranged train travel for society’s unwanted.

In October 1940, Eichmann and the office IV D 4 organized the deportation of nearly 7,000 Jews from Baden and Saarpfalz to areas of unoccupied France.

Hey, France is nice, right? Oh wait. Yes but...

From his position in RSHA section IV B 4, however, Eichmann played his central role in the deportation of over 1.5 million Jews from all over Europe to killing centers and killing sites in occupied Poland and in parts of the occupied Soviet Union.

You can read Eichmann’s full bio at he Holocaust Encyclopedia. His wartime gig was arranging transportation for more than 1.5 mil Jewish people, humans, to their horrific deaths. Faced with judgement—execution for his crimes—Eichmann felt he deserved sympathy and forbearance. Emmmmmmmmmm. I'm having trouble with this.

Working with other German agencies, he determined how the property of deported Jews would be seized and made certain that his office would benefit from the confiscated assets.

I imagine they were thinking this, possibly.
Hey, before we snuff out these lives, slowly and mega painfully, what say we pillage and ransack a bit. After all, the poor bastards won’t need all their earthly possessions where they’re going. Waste not want not and shit..

In the letter, Eichmann repeated the defense offered at his four-month trial in 1961: that he was a low-level functionary following orders and that he should not be held accountable for the crimes of his superiors. He wrote that the judges who convicted him were “not able to empathize with the time and situation in which I found myself during the war years.”

Oh yeah, it was different back then, man—EVERYone was killing the Jews. It was a thing, ya know. Honest!

Eichmann as bro. I can so see it—can't you?

“It is also incorrect that I never let myself be influenced by human emotions,” he added, noting: “Specifically after having witnessed the outrageous human atrocities, I immediately asked to be transferred. Also, during the police investigation I voluntarily revealed horrors that had been unknown until then, in order to help establish the indisputable truth.”

Nazi Bro at his trial

That’s nice—after getting a better look see at the spectacularly barbarous crimes against humanity that he was a big part of, he requested a transfer. How heroic of him. And, when they lost the war and were caught, he ratted out his bros in outrageous depravity. Yeah, he should get good doobie points for that, right? (WRONG!)

“I am not able to recognize the court’s ruling as just, and I ask, Your Honor Mr. President, to exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out,” he concluded, before signing his name in blue ink on lined paper.

“I am not able to recognize the court’s ruling as just..." Oh puh-LEEEZE motherfucker! Where, you giant puddle of diseased rat vomit, was the justice for the 1.5 million Jews whose torturous deaths you facilitated? Hmmmmm?

He felt he was entitled and yet, none of his fellow humans—the ones he sent to death—deserved the same?

The subtitle of writer/philosopher, Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem is A Report on the Banality of Evil. Evil doesn’t come in looking like Freddy Krueger or Darth Vader. Nope. It’s the Gordon Gekkos and Eve Harringtons that we need to look out for.

Again I ask, don’t we all deserve mercy? Why can’t I imagine sparing a shred for Eichmann or anyone else of his stripe?

Mercy, Mercy Me—Marvin Gaye