The Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem
The organiser of the deportations was seized in Argentina and tried in Jerusalem; for the first time survivors spoke publicly, and the world listened.
Adolf Eichmann, head of the Gestapo's Jewish department and chief organiser of the deportations, hid in Argentina after the war as Ricardo Klement. In May 5720 Mossad agents tracked him down and brought him out; Isser Harel directed the operation and Peter Malkin seized him on a Buenos Aires street.
The trial opened on 11 April 5721 in Jerusalem, at Beit Ha'am, with Eichmann in a bulletproof glass booth. The prosecutor Gideon Hausner began: 'When I stand before you, judges of Israel, I do not stand alone: with me are six million accusers.'
What mattered was not the legal argument but the 112 witnesses. For the first time survivors testified publicly, on the record, and the country listened on the radio; the streets emptied. Until then the Shoah had been spoken of little and awkwardly in Israel; after the trial the silence ended. The writer Yehiel Dinur, 'Ka-Tzetnik', collapsed on the stand.
Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed on the night of 1 June 5722—the only death sentence ever carried out in Israel. His ashes were scattered at sea beyond territorial waters so that he would have no grave.
How we know
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Mishnah Makkot 1:10 — a Sanhedrin that executes once in seven years is called destructive
Documents of the period
- Ugolovnoe the case of 40/61, Ierusalim — the trial transcript and two hundred hours of film
- Gideon Hausner’s address, 11 April 1961 — “six million accusers stand here with me”
Basis: tradition.