The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann

Rating:
Summary: A Coming Of Age Trial for Israel.
Review: Israel had been in existence only a decade before this historic trial. A special law had to be instigated for this heinous crime called the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law; it passed and was used as the basis for the process of trying Adolf Eichmann.

He had grown up in Austria, but considered a failure by his family and himself. At the age of 26, he joined the Nazi Party, received SS military training and, in Berlin, he worked to establish a Freemasons Museum.

He became an expert on Zionism and was sent back to Vienna to rid Austria, then an annexation to the Third Reich, of all Jews through forced emigration. For the first time in his life, he was a success -- by forcing 116,000 to leave that country.

He worked up to the rank of colonel in the SS before the collapse of the Third Reich. He worked his kind of magic again (in Hungary) where his efforts had half a million of Hungarian Jews deported less than a year before the defeat of Nazi Germany. At first, the Jewish people were sent to eastern Europe and later to the extermination camps.

He was never a policy maker, but carried out his orders to rid the Nazi controlled territories of those born Jews. Taking the alias Ricardo Klement, he was joined by his wife and children where he went from Europe to Argentina nine years until his capture. It took two and a half years for the inner workings of the new country of Israel to get its information confirmed as they were doubtful that an important Nazi would choose to live in such a poor, low-class neighborhood. He was turned in by a half-blind Jew.

Almost a year after his capture in Argentina, a 4-month trial was held in Jerusalem, then four months transpired before the sentencing. There was an appeal by his German defense counsel three months later; two years after his capture (two days after the appeal was refused) this 'arch-criminal' was hanged at the age of 56. This writer was able to interview the German Attorney who broke his 35-yr. silence to talk with her for this book.

The graphic testimony showing the horrors of the Holocaust revived all the pain and abhorrence toward such by the whole world. At the time of his capture, it was assumed he had been a top leader. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. He had obtained a visa from the Vatican to relocate to Argentina.

He was what might call a "petty" (nonessential) officer and, to upset the modern world twenty years after the war atrocities had occurred, on such a minor player in the scheme of things was a mistake by the independent state called Israel. Things are never quite what they seem.

During the 1950s Israel was a society in the making and the Holocaust survivors were an important element of the culture of this settlement. Due largely to their demographic attributes, the survivors there in Israel were active and influential group of immigrants. The author thought that this trial symbolized 'the beginning of Israel's coming of age.'

Many people remember in great detail what they were doing at the moment they learned of Eichmann's capture on May 23, 1960. Few events in the life of a nation leave a permanent impression on the lives of its population, events of the kind that make people forever remember where they were and what they were doing at the exact moment of its happening. This is what happened with the survivors of the Holocaust who lived in Israel.

In the USA, it was November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullet to his head which will forever stay in American's memories.