Eichmann trial

In 1960, the major Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina and brought to Israel to stand trial.[1] His trial, which opened on 11 April 1961, was televised and broadcast internationally, intended to educate about the crimes committed against Jews, which had been secondary to the Nuremberg trials.[2] Prosecutor Hausner also tried to challenge the portrayal of Jewish functionaries that had emerged in the earlier trials, showing them at worst as victims forced to carry out Nazi decrees while minimizing the "gray zone" of morally questionable behavior.[3] Hausner later wrote that available archival documents "would have sufficed to get Eichmann sentenced ten times over"; nevertheless, he summoned more than 100 witnesses, most of them who had never met the defendant, for didactic purposes.[4] Defense attorney Robert Servatius refused the offers of twelve survivors who agreed to testify for the defense, exposing what they considered immoral behavior by other Jews.[5] Eichmann was charged with fifteen counts of violating the law.[6]

The Israeli Supreme Court hears Eichmann's appeal

Counts 1–4 were for crimes against the Jewish people:[6]

1. Killing Jews, via the systematic deportation of millions of Jews to the extermination camps beginning in August 1941[7]
2. Placing Jews in living conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction, by imprisoning them in concentration and extermination camps[7]
3. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to Jews[7]
4. Preventing births against Jews, with an order for forced abortions in Theresienstadt Ghetto[7]

Counts 5–7 were for crimes against humanity against Jews:[6]

5. Forced emigration of Jews from March 1938 to October 1941, deportation of Jews in October 1939 during the Nisko Plan, and his role in the Final Solution[8]
6. Persecuting Jews on national, religious, or political grounds[8]
7. The systematic plunder of the property of millions of Jews. Theft of property was not enumerated in the law as a crime against humanity (it was counted as a war crime), but the prosecution argued that it fit the criteria of "any other inhuman act committed against any civilian population" as stipulated in the law. Since Eichmann founded the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, which confiscated the property of deported Jews, and the court determined that the purpose of such confiscation was in part to instill terror and facilitate the deportation and murder of Jews, it found him guilty on this count.[9]

Count 8 was for war crimes, based on Eichmann's role in the systematic persecution and murder of Jews during World War II.[10]

Counts 9–12 related to crimes against humanity against non-Jews:[6]

9. Mass deportations of Polish civilians[11]
10. Mass deportations of Slovene civilians[11]

1. Participation in the Romani genocide by the systematic forced deportation of Romani people. Although the court did not find evidence that Eichmann knew that the Romani victims were sent to extermination camps, it nevertheless found him guilty on that count.[12]
2. Participation in the Lidice massacre; he was found guilty for deportation of part of the population of Lidice but not the massacre itself.[12]

Counts 13–15 charged Eichmann with membership in enemy organizations, respectively the Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP (SS), Sicherheitsdienst der Reichfuehrers SS (SD), and Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo). He was found guilty on all three counts because he was not only proven to be a member of these organizations but committed crimes as part of his role, namely those discussed above.[10]

Convicted on all fifteen counts, Eichmann was sentenced to death. He appealed to the Supreme Court, which confirmed the convictions and the sentence. President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi rejected Eichmann's request to commute the sentence. In Israel's only judicial execution to date, Eichmann was hanged on 31 May 1962 at Ramla Prison.[13]