Eichmann’s Prison Garb Changed from Red to Gray to Improve His Mood

Adolf Eichman, the former Gestapo colonel awaiting disposition of his Supreme Court appeal from the death sentence meted out to him last month by the District Court of Jerusalem, is now wearing a gray prisoner’s uniform, instead of the red costume usually worn by convicts awaiting death, it was learned here today.

Prison Commissioner Arye Nir ordered the change when he decided that Eichmann might suffer a nervous breakdown, “as a result of his low spirits,” it was stated, Friday, Eichmann was visited in his secret prison by the chief of his defense counsel, Dr. Robert Servatius, of Cologne, who discussed with the convicted man some details connected with the preparation of the appeal to the high tribunal.

Eichmann’s costume was changed from red to gray before the prison authorities received a request to this effect from Israelis who had been members of a former underground movement that fought the British in this country during the days of the British mandate over Palestine. Members of the underground who had been sentenced to death by the British had been forced to wear the red costume. The protests were based on the ground that garbing Eichmann in red constituted “a violation of the memory of those fighters for Israel freedom who had been executed by the British.”