Sixty years ago I was hired by a Brazilian weekly news magazine to cover the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Israel. Even after so many decades, that moment, at exactly 9 a.m. on April 11, 1961, when he stepped into a bulletproof glass booth erected in the Jerusalem courtroom, is clearly imprinted on me. It was a clear, cool spring day in the Holy City and there was a thunderous silence as he stood still for a few seconds, his right hand trembling slightly. Eichmann seemed somehow absent and completely ignored the hundreds of participants who were crowding in the hall.
My press card showed seat 18, row H. It was a good seat on the left side of the hall entrance as the booth was about 15 meters away from me in the same left place. Eichmann held a stack of papers on a small table in front of him. Near the first row were the large defense and prosecution tables, the approaches of which differed significantly. Leading Israeli prosecutor Gideon Hausner, 45, pursued a theatrical and emotional style, while German defense attorney Robert Servatius, 65, was strictly technical.
I can still hear the clerk shouting, « Beit Hamishpat! » ordered everyone to stand as the three judges went to their bench. Moshe Landau, the presiding judge, ordered the participants to sit down. Eichmann followed him and began to adjust his headphones. He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, and dark tie. The suit and shirt were visibly oversized. He behaved normally and calmly throughout the process and looked like an impeccably minded clerk in a town hall department. He was nervous on a few occasions. When he witnessed atrocities committed by the Nazis, his nose twitched. At one session, when the prosecutor was revealing the operation of the gas chambers, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth.
Hausner filed 15 cases with the court, including crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity. There was chills in the courtroom when he pointed to the booth and said he was not alone as a prosecutor:
I have six million accusers. But they can’t get up and point an accusing finger at whoever is sitting in the dock yelling, « I blame. » Because their ashes are piled on the hills of Auschwitz and the fields of Treblinka and are scattered in the forests of Poland. Their graves are scattered across the length and breadth of Europe. Her blood screams, but her voice cannot be heard. Therefore, I will be their spokesman and recite the terrible indictment on their behalf.
The first Holocaust survivor to testify was the father of Herschel Grynszpan, the young Jewish man who was a German diplomat at the German embassy in 1938 Paris killed. The murder was used by the Nazis as a pretext for the infamous Kristallnacht. Other accounts from witnesses called to the stand turned out to be the most important moments in the trial. The statements of Zivia Lubetkin and the poet Abba Kovner, both survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, were particularly significant. Their testimonies helped save Jewish pride by showing the world that some were fighting back and that the people of Israel were not short of heroes.
The cafeteria down from the main hall was the melting pot of the trial. As is common on similar occasions, the journalists’ behavior was rather formal for the first two or three days. But as the days went on, the cafeteria resembled a private men’s club (there weren’t as many female press representatives at the time as there are today).
English was the common language of journalists. I remember a Japanese correspondent who didn’t speak English, French, or German. Heaven knows how to follow the procedures of the process. There was some disagreement over the validity of the jurisdiction of the trial, but the tearful and heartbreaking testimony of Holocaust survivors reduced all other possible disagreements and left everyone devastated. Under such circumstances one does not find friends, only acquaintances. But I developed a warm relationship with the American journalist Robert St. John. He was 59 years old and I was 27. (According to a note published in the Maariv newspaper, I was the youngest of all foreign correspondents). St. John asked me the main focus of my writing and gave me valuable advice. He was a deeply learned man and the author of an excellent biography of David Ben Gurion.
To this day, people have asked me if I met Hannah Arendt while reporting on the trial. No I did not. At the time, I wasn’t even familiar with her books. It is noteworthy that her name was associated with Eichmann’s, as she characterized his murderous journey as the « banality of evil ».
This label appears in her book « Eichmann in Jerusalem », published two years after the Process was published. The famous American publisher and intellectual Norman Podhoretz reviewed the book with the title: « Hannah Arendt on Eichmann: A Study in the Perversity of Brilliance. »
Arendt makes the unsubstantiated claim that those from the upper Nazi levels, including Eichmann, the planned “final solution” requires Jewish cooperation through administrative work. It is evident that there was no room for banality at all in such a sophisticated and meticulous plan of genocide.
Ref: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com
