Recording the Eichmann interviews

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Witness History – "Recording the Eichmann Interviews"

Episode Date: June 1, 2026
Host: Luis Hidalgo
Featured Guest: Saskia Sassen (daughter of Wilhelm Sassen)
Main Theme:
This episode of Witness History explores the secret interviews conducted with Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, by Nazi-sympathising journalist Wilhelm Sassen in Argentina during the 1950s. Through the eyes and memories of Sassen's daughter, Saskia Sassen, listeners are brought into the tense, morally complex world surrounding the capture, confession, and legacy of Eichmann, shedding light on one of the most significant documentary records of the Nazi genocide.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Capture of Adolf Eichmann (00:05–01:54)

• Luis Hidalgo introduces the episode, setting the political context: Israel’s Mossad covertly abducted Eichmann from Argentina, sparking international outcry and raising questions about sovereignty and justice.
• Quote: “Argentina was outraged at what it saw as a violation of its sovereignty. But Israel was triumphant.” (00:39)

Eichmann’s Presence in Buenos Aires & Connection to the Sassen Family (01:54–02:36)

• Saskia Sassen recounts the night of Eichmann’s abduction, with his sons bursting into her family home, accusing her father of betraying Eichmann.
• Quote: “In the middle of the night, this massive banging of doors and this young man appear with guns and lots of shouting, lots of accusations to my father. You gave him away. Now that you're done with the interviews, what I felt very strongly was the intensity of hatred.” – Saskia Sassen (01:54)
• Saskia recalls Eichmann as someone she instinctively disliked, even before knowing his full role as an architect of genocide.

The Interviews: Recording the “Final Solution” (02:36–04:16)

• Wilhelm Sassen held marathon recording sessions with Eichmann at their home, aiming to write Eichmann’s memoirs and document his pivotal role in the Holocaust.
• Quote: “These were serious, long conversations. And some people have said that my father extracted information from him… he said more than anyone had ever heard him say, you know, the way he believed in it all, etc.” – Saskia Sassen (03:15)
• The resulting interviews amounted to 29 hours of tapes and over 1,000 pages of transcripts, later known as the “Sassen Tapes.”

Publication Efforts and Surveillance (04:16–05:00)

• Sassen attempted to publish Eichmann’s confessions in major magazines like Time and Life.
• In one episode, journalists from Life bugged the Sassen home using “state-of-the-art American bugging devices” to authenticate Eichmann’s identity.
• Quote: “They had to bore a hole in the roof from the second story. Then they had the state of the art American bugging devices… my mother felt always… that all of us really in the family, the four of us, were at risk. She was terrified.” – Saskia Sassen (04:16)

Wilhelm Sassen’s Ideology and Life in Argentina (05:00–06:35)

• Wilhelm Sassen was a fervent National Socialist, having worked for Nazi propaganda and finding ideological kinship with Argentinian dictator Juan Perón and other exiled Nazis.
• Saskia reflects on her conflicted relationship with her father and his politics:
  Quote: “Not a Nazi in the narrow sense, but a National Socialism. That is why he admired and became a close friend of Peron, who was a National Socialist.” (05:13)
• After WWII, Wilhelm fled Europe, eventually settling in Buenos Aires, becoming a prominent journalist among a circle aiming to rewrite the Nazi legacy.
• Quote: “That became attractive to this project that a bunch of people had, which was to rewrite history a bit, create a positive account of the Nazi regime, this brutal Nazi regime.” – Saskia Sassen (06:17)

The Legacy and Importance of the Sassen Tapes (06:35–07:25)

• Saskia reveals she cannot bring herself to listen to the recordings, aware of their historical and moral weight.
• Wilhelm, as a journalist, saw the interviews as a major coup, often pressing Eichmann for more detail in a casual conversational manner.
• Disputes arise around the authenticity and completeness of the tapes, but Saskia affirms their accuracy:
  Quote: “No, Eichmann didn’t quite say that. And he did actually, because it’s on the tapes. You can hear him on the tapes.” (07:08)

Eichmann’s Self-Portrayal vs. The Reality in the Recordings (07:25–08:29)

• At his trial, Eichmann claimed Sassen distorted his words, insisting he was merely a functionary with no ideological commitment.
• However, the Sassen tapes capture Eichmann’s chilling candor, including explicit and remorseless statements about the scope and intent of the Final Solution.
• Notable archival audio (08:03):
  Eichmann (archival): “If 10.3 million of these enemies had been killed, then we would have completed our task… because there were only a few of us, we couldn’t fight the spirit of the age. We did what we could.” (08:03)

Unresolved Questions and Saskia’s Life After (08:29–09:01)

• The episode closes noting that the tapes remained hidden for decades, and it remains unclear if Sassen betrayed Eichmann or edited transcripts to protect him.
• Saskia left Argentina at 19, later becoming a global authority on globalization and never returning to her childhood home.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Eichmann was an extraordinarily unlikable type. Just his face was a hollowness. He could have been a walking dead, you know. I didn’t know who he was. I just hated him.” – Saskia Sassen (02:24)
• “He was always drinking. Now, what I have heard is that he extracted language from Eichmann that nobody had heard Eichmann say…” – Saskia Sassen (06:59)
• “If 10.3 million of these enemies had been killed, then we would have completed our task…” – Adolf Eichmann (archival) (08:03)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:05 – Introduction and context for Eichmann’s abduction
• 01:54 – Saskia Sassen describes the night of Eichmann’s capture and her personal memories
• 02:36 – Details on the interview process and family reactions
• 04:16 – Bugging of the Sassen home by Time/Life magazine
• 05:00 – Wilhelm Sassen’s background and ideology
• 06:35 – Saskia’s reflections on the significance and legacy of the tapes
• 07:25 – Eichmann’s self-justification vs. the reality on tape
• 08:03 – Archival recording: Eichmann’s unrepentant statement on the Holocaust
• 08:29 – Unanswered questions and Saskia’s later life

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Summary Takeaway

This episode provides an intimate window into how Adolf Eichmann’s words were preserved and later revealed to the world, underscoring the moral ambiguities and dangers faced by a family living at a crossroads of history. Through Saskia Sassen’s recollections, listeners confront the dark legacy of both perpetrators and enablers, and the vital importance of documented evidence in exposing crimes of such magnitude.

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Transcript

[Narrator]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host (Luis Hidalgo)]

Welcome to Witness History. This is the podcast that looks back at a key moment in history that's helped to shape our world. Episodes come out every weekday and are just nine minutes long. Make sure you never miss an episode by hitting subscribe and turning on your push notifications. Luis Hidalgo is taking you back to June 1960, when Argentina and Israel were at loggerheads over the kidnap of one of the most wanted war criminals of the Second World War. A man who'd been at the center of the Nazis extermination of the Jews, Adolf Eichmann.

[Narrator]

Throughout the 1950s, Adolf Eichmann had been living in Argentina under an assumed name when Israeli agents found and abducted him and smuggled him to Israel. Argentina was outraged at what it saw as a violation of its sovereignty. But Israel was triumphant.

[Saskia Sassen]

M. Ha Petron has official Bayata Yudim,

[Narrator]

The man who'd been called the face of the Holocaust would stand trial in Israel. The Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion told an astonished world. Eichmann had been walking home from work in Buenos Aires when a small team of agents from the Israeli secret service Mossad snatched him off the street and and bundled him into a car. It would be 12 days before Eichmann's family and associates in Argentina knew what had happened to him. Saskia Sassen is the daughter of a Dutch journalist and Nazi sympathiser who knew Eichmann in Buenos Aires. Wilhelm Sassen had interviewed him for hours at his home about the Final Solution. That night that Eichmann disappeared. Saskia remembers Eichmann's sons bursting into their house, demanding to know where their father was.

[Saskia Sassen]

In the middle of the night, this massive banging of doors and this young man appear with guns and lots of shouting, lots of accusations to my father. You gave him away. Now that you're done with the interviews, what I felt very strongly was the intensity of hatred.

[Narrator]

Saskia vividly remembers how this man who'd overseen the logistics of the Holocaust for Hitler, had used to come to their house to talk to her father. It was only when he was captured that she really understood who he was.

[Saskia Sassen]

Eichmann was an extraordinarily unlikable type. Just his face was a hollowness. He could have been a walking dead, you know, I didn't know who he was. I just hated him.

[Narrator]

Eichmann and her father would sometimes be joined by other people. They'd spend hours closeted together at the Sassen family home.

[Saskia Sassen]

I don't know if every Sunday, but it was regularly. Certainly it must have been over a year and we knew that my mother hated that person, and my sister and I, of course, we would try to sneak in, but they locked the door and we were out.

[Narrator]

And what your father was doing in there was recording Eichmann, wasn't it? For hours on end, interviewing him about what he'd done, how he'd organized the logistics of the Final Solution, of sending these 6 million Jews to their death. They were going to write a book together of Eichmann's memoirs.

[Saskia Sassen]

These were serious, long conversations. And some people have said that my father extracted information from him and that he said more than anyone had ever heard him say, you know, the way he believed in it all, etc.

[Narrator]

These recordings, there are 29 hours of them and a thousand pages of transcripts only re emerged years later. Zaskia remembers something else too. Her father, Wilhelm, wrote for several leading magazines in including the American magazine Time and Life, and he'd approached them about publishing the interviews with Eichmann. Eichmann, of course, was living under an assumed name, Ricardo Clement. His circle of sympathizers knew who he was, including Sassen. But who else knew isn't clear. What we do know is that Time and Life may have wanted to check for themselves that what Sasson was telling them was true.

[Saskia Sassen]

One time, the people from Time and Life sent experts that bugged our house so that they had a recording. Because they wanted to publish this, they needed the direct evidence captured by them, not just via my father's interviews. So they had to bore a hole in the roof from the second story. Then they had the state of the art American bugging devices. Now, this was long before the capture, clearly, and I think my mother felt always that all of us really in the family, the four of us, were at risk. She was terrified.

[Narrator]

Wilhelm Sassen was a National Socialist. During the Second World War, when Germany had occupied his native Netherlands, he'd worked with the Nazis, and after the war was imprisoned and accused of being a war criminal himself.

[Saskia Sassen]

He went to the war front in Europe as a journalist, part of this battalion of journalists that Goebbel had set up. But he became a kind of fanatic. Not a Nazi in the narrow sense, but a National Socialism. That is why he admired and became a close friend of Peron, who was a National Socialist. So there was this ambiguity. I had a lot of fights with him. We never stopped fighting, because I think between 9 and 12 I began to understand something about a politics that belonged to a past, but which had, of course, a huge shadow effect in the present.

[Narrator]

Wilhelm Sassen managed to escape from prison and fled first to Ireland and then to Argentina. That was in 1947, the year Saskia was born. Buenos Aires at the time was a melting pot of cultures and politics, and many former Nazis and Nazi sympathisers found refuge there. Wilhelm Sassen began carving out a career interviewing some of Latin America's most famous dictators for leading magazines of the day.

[Saskia Sassen]

That positioned him as a writer. That became attractive to this project that a bunch of people had, which was to rewrite history a bit, create a positive account of the Nazi regime, this brutal Nazi regime. That is how it started.

[Narrator]

Even now, almost 60 years on, Saskia can't bring herself to listen to the recordings that Eichmann and her father made together. He had Eichmann talking on tape. I know about this most appalling crime. Yeah, I mean, your father. Did he have a sense of how important what Eichmann was telling him was?

[Saskia Sassen]

Well, the journalist in him thought, this is a coup. That is, I think, why he did it. And he pushed, he pushed, he pushed, but all in the form of conversation. He was always drinking. Now, what I have heard is that he extracted language from Eichmann that nobody had heard Eichmann say, and this created a little bit of a debate as well. No, Eichmann didn't quite say that. And he did actually, because it's on the tapes. You can hear him on the tapes.

[Narrator]

At his trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann accused Sassen of distorting what they talked about to make headlines. Eichmann wanted to portray himself not as an ideologue or an architect of the Final Solution, but as a bureaucrat, as he put it, a small cog in Hitler's extermination machine. But in the Sassen tapes, a different Eichmann emerges. A chilling Eichmann who has no regrets, except he says in this extract that they didn't fulfill their duty. They didn't kill all the Jews.

[Adolf Eichmann (archival audio)]

If 10.3 million of these enemies had been killed, then we would have completed our task. And because this did not happen, I am to blame for the suffering and the adversity of our future generations. Maybe they will curse us for this, but because there were only a few of us, we couldn't fight the spirit of the age. We did what we could.

[Narrator]

In 1962, Adolf Eichmann became the first and last person to be hanged in Israel. Wilhelm Sassen died 40 years later. We may never know if he betrayed Eichmann to Mossad or the CIA, or whether he doctored the transcripts. He sent to Eichmann's trial to protect him. Why did the original tapes disappear from view for so long? There are many unanswered questions. Saskia Sassen left Argentina for America aged 19 and never returned. Today she is one of the world's leading authorities on globalization.

[Podcast Host (Luis Hidalgo)]

Louise Hidalgo spoke to Saskia Sassen in 2015 for Witness History. If you found this interesting, then you may want to check out some of our other episodes, such as the Eichmann trial, I wrote Schindler's List and the death of Adolf Hitler. And why not leave us a review? Thanks for listening.

[Various Witness History Clips/Other Speakers]

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[Narrator]

And here, witnesses have spoken of a

[Saskia Sassen]

wall of water that swept coastlines in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand.

[Various Witness History Clips/Other Speakers]

Hear from the people who were there. He heard me praying while he was shooting and he just stopped and he said, I'm not going to. I'm going to leave you here to tell the story knowing that you have a spy and that you're following a spy. It doesn't get any cooler than that. Witness history brings you first hand accounts.

[Saskia Sassen]

Merkel gets up and says, I'm going. And Tusk says, I'm locking the door. Nobody's leaving. You're reaching a compromise or you're not leaving.

[Various Witness History Clips/Other Speakers]

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