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Examples Of I Was Just Following Orders By Eichmann

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Though The Nazi Hunters is entirely based around Adolf Eichmann and his capture, we don’t get a chance to look into his character until the end of the story. At the end of the story, we are able to see what he thinks of himself and how he feels towards his actions during the Holocaust. “I was just following orders” is his go-to answer for any accusation held against him. He never denies committing the crimes but tries to deter the severity of them by relating himself to a soldier trying to do right for his country. Almost everything he does or says reveals something about him since he seldom interacts with other characters. While Eichmann was following orders he received, he was still a murderer. Eichmann knew what he was doing and …show more content…

Any excuse repeated excessively loses meaning and Eichmann’s mantra is just that: an excuse. Any human being with a moral compass would feel awful if they saw that they were subjecting another human being to circumstances as awful as Auschwitz. Eichmann could have found a way to escape being in charge of the genocide of six million Jews. I hope that if I were in Eichmann’s position, faced with killing six million innocent people or being punished for trying to escape the Nazi party, that I would choose to flee the party even with the risks because that is what I believe a strong individual would …show more content…

He was perfectly calm the entire journey and made no attempt to escape capture. He even tried to help the team get him aboard the plane more inconspicuously when he suggests putting a jacket on him because according to him “I don’t look right. I have to put on a jacket.” The author describes this as a “good sign that he seemed to actually want to help” (170). This perfectly shows that he had no intention of escaping. It was also Eichmann’s way of trying to get the team to warm up to him and sympathize with him. This is because he had accepted the fact that he was going to trial in Israel and knew his best chance was getting a prison sentence. For the most part, Adolf was perfectly nice to the team until they arrived in Israel. However, towards the end of the book when he is walking to his death, his true colors show when he makes a rather nasty comment towards Eitan. “I hope, very much, that it will be your turn soon after mine.” (208). Eichmann did a good job hiding who he really was and this single line is one of the only in the book where we get to see who Adolf truly

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