Eichmann's Executioner by Astrid Dehe

Author:Astrid Dehe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620973028
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2017-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

No Tears

One month after the condemned man said goodbye to his wife, the appeals court announces its verdict. Among the small audience in the Beit Ha’am is the Reverend William Lovell Hull, a Canadian preacher who is trying to save the condemned man’s soul. The preacher has already sat opposite him in the meeting room on twelve occasions, together with his wife Lillian, who acts as the interpreter. The condemned man speaks very little during these visits; most of the talking is done by Hull, who looks like a businessman and offers salvation in exchange for remorse. The man opposite him smiles politely. After the preacher and his wife have left, he writes; Hull has already received several long letters explaining what the condemned man thinks of the Christian mission. Not much. To him, the Christian God is too small. And yet Hull does not give up; he wants this soul, perhaps the darkest soul he knows. Delivering this soul would be his greatest triumph. He wants to defy Satan himself, Satan, whose power he believes he can feel through the glass in the meeting room on each visit, oppressing, challenging, an exterminating grip that must be disarmed by the gentle spirit of evangelism. If only there were enough time.

Today, too, Hull sees the man behind glass, but here in the courtroom he does not give anything away, he looks pale and tired. The five judges enter, the chairman opens the session, then the verdict is read. The judges take it in turns to read, each one reading faster than his predecessor, they race through the text, the final word has already been read, the appeal denied, the verdict of the District Court is confirmed on all counts. The session is closed, the judges leave the room.

The hastiness strikes Hull as indecent. Such an abrupt ending, he writes in his book “The Struggle for a Soul,” cannot be reconciled with the severity of the decision, and neither can the speed at which the verdict was read. A situation such as this one requires composure, he believes, a solemn rhythm, loaded pauses. He is equally unimpressed by the behavior of the public; when leaving the room, the people beam as though they were coming out of the cinema. They could not be expected to shed tears, writes the preacher. But perhaps there could have been even the slightest hint that the matter was being taken seriously.

The people in this country do not want such seriousness anymore, no burdens, no grief. In the four months since the verdict and the telephone survey that followed, the mood has shifted. People want an end, a beginning. A death. As soon as possible.

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