H9: The Holocaust

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The Eichmann Trial

Adolf Eichmann was one of the main organisers of the Nazi extermination programme. His crimes were many and there is documentary proof for all of them - orders bearing his signature, his service file, the testimony of witnesses, including his accomplices - and millions dead. In 1961 the Israelis kidnapped him from his hideaway home in Buenos Aires and brought him to trial before the Jerusalem District Court. The trial lasted from April to December of that year and was broadcast on Israeli TV and was reported on daily around the world. The sheer amount of information brought by the prosecution opened the eyes of many people who, until then, only had a dim recognition of what had happened to the Jews of Europe during W.W.II. The Eichmann trial was not only an act of justice, it became a worldwide educational event - especially for the new generation which after a lapse of only fifteen years was already failing to grasp the immensity and implications of the Holocaust. In May 1962 the Israeli Supreme Court dismissed Eichmann's appeal and the President of Israel subsequently rejected his plea for clemency. Eichmann was hanged at the Ramleh prison, his body was cremated, and the ashes were scattered over the Mediterranean Sea. It is the only time that the death penalty has been carried out under Israeli law.

Can we understand?

After it was over, Elie Wiesel spoke to one of the three presiding judges in the Eichmann trial. He asked him the following: "Given your role in this trial, you ought to know more about the scope of the Holocaust than any living person, more even than those who lived through it in the flesh and in their memory. You have studied all the documents, read all the secret reports, interrogated all the witnesses. Now tell me: do you understand this fragment of the past, those few pages of history?" In a soft humble voice the judge confessed: "No, not at all. I know the facts and the events that served as their framework; I know how the tragedy unfolded minute by minute, but this knowledge, as if coming from outside, has nothing to do with understanding. There is in all this a kind of forbidden zone, inaccessible to reason... who knows, perhaps that's the gift which God, in a moment of grace gave to man: it prevents him from understanding everything, thus saving him from madness"

All there is to know about Adolph Eichmann

EYES - Medium
HAIR - Medium
WEIGHT - Medium
HEIGHT - Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES - None
NUMBER OF FINGERS - Ten
NUMBER OF TOES - Ten
INTELLIGENCE - Medium

What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?

(Leonard Cohen in Flowers for Hitler)

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