The Eichmann Trial (25 page)

A
number of years ago, I was invited to a conference at Yad Vashem. While there, I met a group of young Rwandans who had asked Yad Vashem to train them in how to conduct oral testimonies with trauma victims. They wanted to ensure that the history of the genocide that had decimated their country and their families would be preserved. Yad Vashem, eager to make them feel comfortable, arranged for them to have dinner on their first night in Jerusalem with French-speaking Holocaust survivors. By the end of the dinner, the two groups of survivors had bonded so strongly that the elderly survivors took the young Rwandans under their wings, invited them to their homes, introduced them to their families, and began to build personal relations. One afternoon, I sat with some of the Rwandans outside of Yad Vashem, looking out over the Judean Hills. They told me of their experiences during the genocide, and their meeting with the Holocaust survivors. One young man whose entire family had been murdered said to me: “I want to tell my story and help my fellow Rwanda survivors tell theirs. Just like the Holocaust survivors. I want people to listen to me as they listen to them.” Despite the inherent contradiction in his next statement, I completely understood what he meant and recognized the passion with which he said it. I had heard it many times before from Holocaust survivors: “
Les générations futures, ceux qui n’étaient pas là, doivent
se souvenir. Et nous qui
étions
là, doivent leur dire
”—Future generations, those who were not there, must remember. And we who
were
there, must tell them.

This may be the most enduring legacy of what occurred in Jerusalem in 1961.

NOTES

Introduction

1.
Edward. T. Linenthal, “The Boundaries of Memory: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,”
American Quarterly
, vol. 46 (Sept. 1994), pp. 421–25; Shoshana Felman,
The Juridical Unconscious
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 127.

2.
The law, under which Zündel was convicted, was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Canadian Supreme Court.
R. v. Zündel
[1992], 2 S.C.R. 731; Second Zündel Trial,
Her Majesty the Queen v. Ernst Zündel
[1988], District Court of Ontario, pp. 45–46, 88, 186.

3.
David Irving, “On Contemporary History and Historiography: Remarks Delivered at the 1983 International Revisionist Conference,”
Journal of Historical Review
, vol. 5 (Winter 1984), pp. 274–75.

4.
Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd & Deborah Lipstadt
, Day 1 (Jan. 11, 2000), p. 98,
www.hdot.org
; Deborah E. Lipstadt,
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
(New York: Free Press, 1993), pp. 161–63, 179–81.

5.
For judgment in
Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd & Deborah Lipstadt
, see
www.hdot.org/en/trial/judgement/13.01
.

Chapter 1

1.
For the Hebrew text of the announcement, see
www.psagot.org.il/index.asp?id=1581
.

2.
Tom Segev,
The Seventh Million
(New York: Henry Holt, 1991), p. 326;
Maariv
, May 24 and June 3, 1960, in Hanna Yablonka,
The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann
(New York: Schocken, 2004), pp. 33–34, 36–37.

3.
Michael Phayer,
The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–45
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 165–69; Uki Goni,
The Real Odessa
(New York: Granta Books, 2002), pp. 297, 327–28.

4.
Simon Wiesenthal,
The Murderers Among Us
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), flyleaf; Simon Wiesenthal,
Justice Not Vengeance
(New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), p. 70; Guy Walters,
Hunting Evil
(New York: Broadway Books, 2009), p. 332.

5.
Wiesenthal,
The Murderers Among Us
, p. 110; Isser Harel, “Simon Wiesenthal and the Capture of Eichmann,” unpublished manuscript, available United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, pp. 99–101 [hereafter Harel, “Simon Wiesenthal”]. This manuscript’s pages are numbered fitfully. I give page references when possible and relevant.

6.
Walters,
Hunting Evil
, pp. 273–74. Though the CIA may have been negligent in pursuing this lead, it did not help Eichmann hide, as some sources subsequently charged.

7.
Eli Rosenbaum,
Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), p. 451;
New Jewish Weekly
, Oct. 3, 1975, in Harel “Simon Wiesenthal,” pp. 25, 30; Simon Wiesenthal to Nahum Goldman, March 30, 1954, in Harel, “Simon Wiesenthal,” n.p. Tom Segev’s highly sympathetic biography of Weisenthal credits him with having found Eichmann. Segev ignores the fact that, while Wiesenthal had placed Eichmann in Argentina in 1953, in 1959 he believed he was in northern Germany. Had the Israelis followed Wiesenthal’s lead, Eichmann would never have been found. Most surprising, Wiesenthal never returned to the baron to find out Eichmann’s precise address (Argentina is a large country) or any additional information. Had he done so, Wiesenthal might have actually deserved the credit he is so often given. Even Segev, who paints a highly positive picture of Wiesenthal, acknowledges that this indefatigable Nazi hunter had a somewhat dubious connection to the facts. According to Segev, Wiesenthal “fabricated” information, “snatched [claims] out of thin air,” and “shrouded [stories] in a cloud of mystery and fantasy.” His assertions were often “figments of his imagination” and “inaccurate.” Moreover, he often did this “intentionally.” In short, it was not unusual for Wiesenthal to “come out with things that quite simply had never happened.” The most telling account of Wiesenthal’s connection to the Eichmann capture comes from the Nazi hunter himself. On May 26, 1960, just a few days after the story broke, he told the
Irish Times
, “Personally, I have had nothing to do with Eichmann’s arrest.” Tom Segev,
Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends
(New York: Doubleday, 2010), pp. 97, 101, 113, 122;
Irish Times
, May 26, 1960.

8.
Yehuda Bauer, “Don’t Resist: A Critique of Phillip Lopate,”
Tikkun
, May-June 1989, p. 67; Elie Wiesel,
And the Sea Is Never Full
(New York: Random House, 1999), p. 129.

9.
President’s Commission on the Holocaust,
Report to the President
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, Sept. 27, 1979), apps. C and D; Jimmy Carter, Executive Order 12169, United States Holocaust Memorial Council, Oct. 26, 1979; Peter Novick,
The Holocaust in American Life
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), p. 215; Walter Reich, “The Use and Abuse of Holocaust Memory,”
www.aei.org/speech/23492
.

10.
Zvi Aharoni and Wilhelm Dietl,
Operation Eichmann: The Truth about the Pursuit, Capture and Trial
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), p. 120.

11.
Raanan Rein,
Argentina, Israel, and the Jews
(College Park: University Press of Maryland, 2002), p. 165.

12.
Harel, “Simon Wiesenthal,” p. 4.

13.
Tuvia Friedman,
Nazi Hunter
(Haifa: Institute of War Documentation, 1961), pp. 236–43; 244–47; Tuvia Friedman,
The Blind Man Who Discovered Adolf Eichmann in Argentina
(Haifa: Institute of Documentation, 1987); Tuvia Friedman,
My Role in Operation Eichmann: A Documentary Collection
(Haifa: Institute of Documentation, 1990); Neal Bascomb,
Hunting Eichmann
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009), pp. 119–22.

14.
Rein,
Argentina
, p. 165; Peter Malkin and Harry Stein,
Eichmann in My Hands
(New York: Warner Bros., 1990), p. 187.

15.
Stan Lauryssens, “The Eichmann Diaries,”
Areté
, no. 26 (Autumn 2008), pp. 42, 58.

16.
Malkin and Stein,
Eichmann in My Hands
, pp. 190, 200; Aharoni and Dietl,
Operation Eichmann
, pp. 79ff, 146; Bascomb,
Hunting Eichmann
, pp. 232-33.

Chapter 2

1.
Isser Harel,
The House on Garibaldi Street
(New York: Viking, 1975), p. 237.

2.
New York Times
, June 7, 8, 11, 12, 1960;
Time
, June 6 and 20, 1960; Aharoni and Dietl,
Operation Eichmann
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), pp. 168-69; Raanan Rein,
Argentina, Israel, and the Jews
(College Park: University of Maryland Press, 2002), pp. 176–77;
American Jewish Yearbook
, vol. 62 (1961), pp. 200, 203.

3.
Golda Meir,
A Land of Our Own
(New York: Putnam, 1973), p. 134.

4.
Hanna Yablonka,
The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann
(New York: Schocken, 2004), p. 45.

5.
La Prensa, El Mundo, La Razón
, all in
New York Times
, June 19, 1960. For the evidence on Eichmann’s role in the arrest and deportation of Jews with Argentinean passports, see
The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem
(Israel: Ministry of Justice, 1992) [hereafter
TAE
], p. 2362.

6.
Rein,
Argentina
, pp. 175, 196–97.

7.
National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting, The Jewish Museum, New York, Item T383; Jeffrey Shandler,
While America Watches
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 122.

8.
Washington Post
, May 27 and June 25, 1960;
Palladium-Item
(Richmond, Ind.), Feb. 21, 1961, in
The Eichmann Case in the American Press
(New York: Institute of Human Relations Press Pamphlet Series, 1961), p. 13;
Time
, June 20, 1960;
New York Post
, June 2, 1960;
Christian Science Monitor
, June 9, 1960.

9.
National Review
, June 4, June 18, July 2, 1960, April 22, 1961; William F. Buckley Jr., “In Search of Anti-Semitism,”
National Review
, vol. 43, no. 24 (1991), pp. 20–62; published as a book by Continuum in 1992.

10.
Haaretz
, July 1, 1960, in Yablonka,
Israel vs. Eichmann
, p. 41;
Washington Post
, June 18, 1960;
New York Times
, June 8 and 18, 1960.

11.
Press Office of German Federal Government
, May 31, 1960;
New York Times
, June 19, 1960;
Washington Post
, May 25, 1960.

12.
Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of European Jews
(Chicago: Quadrangle, 1961), p. 119; Norbert Frei,
Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 55.

13.
Yablonka,
Israel vs. Eichmann
, pp. 51–52.

14.
New York Times Magazine
, Dec. 18, 1960, and Jan. 8 and 22, 1961;
Time
, June 13, 1960.

15.
Oscar Handlin, “Ethics and Eichmann,”
Commentary
, Aug. 1960; Oscar Handlin, “The Ethics of the Eichmann Case,”
Issues
, Winter 1961;
Chicago Tribune
, April 14, 1961; Saul Friedländer,
The Years of Extermination
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. xxi; Yosef Gorny,
Between Auschwitz and Jerusalem
(London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), pp. 23–25; Elmer Berger, “The Eichmann Case Judgment,” (American Council for Judaism, March 28, 1962), p. 20; Erich Fromm, “Israel and World Jews,”
Jewish Newsletter
, June 17, 1960.

16.
Charles Liebman, “Diaspora Influence on Israel: The Ben-Gurion–Blaustein ‘Exchange,’ ”
Jewish Social Studies
, vol. 36. no. 3 (1974), pp. 275, 278–79.

17.
Gorny,
Between Auschwitz and Jerusalem
, pp. 20–27; Carol Felsenthal,
Power, Privilege, and the
Post (New York: Putnam, 1993), p. 68.

18.
Herbert Ehrmann, memo to members of the Executive Board and National Advisory Council, July 7, 1960, American Jewish Committee Archives, Irving Engel file 1958-60-61.

19.
E. A. Bayne, “Israel’s Indictment of Adolf Eichmann,” American Universities Field Staff Reports Service, Southwest Asia Series, vol. 9, no. 7 (Oct. 1960).

20.
S. Andhil Fineberg to Dr. John Slawson, Dec. 7, 1960, American Jewish Committee Archives.

21.
American Jewish Committee, press release, May 1, 1961.