To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destructionof their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of thewhole dark story. It had been known about before, but it hasnow been exposed for the first time in all its pathetic and sordid detail by Raul Hilberg, whose standard work The Destruc-tion of the European Jews I mentioned before. In the matterof cooperation, there was no distinction between the highlyassimilated Jewish communities of Central and Western Europeand the Yiddish-speaking masses of the East. (117-118p)
He was in completecommand of himself, nay, he was more: he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger, to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death.
He then proceeded: "After a shortwhile, gentlemen, we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them." In the face of death, he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows, his memory played him the last trick; he was "elated" and he forgot that this was his own funeral.
It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us-the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.
(252p)