page_title: Adolf Eichmann
section_title: Trial
hierarchical_section_title: Adolf Eichmann / Trial
caption_attribution_description: English: Adolf Eichman's trial judges (left to right) Benjamin Halevi, Moshe Landau, and Yitzhak Raveh עברית: שופטיו של אדולף אייכמן (משמאל): בנימין הלוי, משה לנדוי ויצחק רווה
context_page_description: Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust—the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in Nazi terminology. He was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. Eichmann was captured by the Mossad in Argentina on 11 May 1960 and subsequently found guilty of war crimes in a widely publicised trial in Jerusalem, where he was executed by hanging in 1962.
  After an unremarkable school career, Eichmann briefly worked for his father's mining company in Austria, where the family had moved in 1914. He worked as a travelling oil salesman beginning in 1927, and joined both the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. He returned to Germany in 1933, where he joined the Sicherheitsdienst; there he was appointed head of the department responsible for Jewish affairs—especially emigration, which the Nazis encouraged through violence and economic pressure.
context_section_description: Eichmann was taken to a fortified police station at Yagur in Israel, where he spent nine months. The Israelis were unwilling to take him to trial based solely on the evidence in documents and witness testimony, so he was subject to daily interrogations, the transcripts of which totalled over 3,500 pages. The interrogator was Chief Inspector Avner Less of the national police. Using documents provided primarily by Yad Vashem and Nazi hunter Tuviah Friedman, Less was often able to determine when Eichmann was lying or being evasive. When additional information was brought forward that forced Eichmann into admitting what he had done, Eichmann would insist he had no authority in the Nazi hierarchy and was only following orders. Inspector Less noted that Eichmann did not seem to realise the enormity of his crimes and showed no remorse. His pardon plea, released in 2016, did not contradict this: "There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders", Eichmann wrote. "I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty."
  Eichmann's trial before a special tribunal of the Jerusalem District Court began on 11 April 1961. The legal basis of the charges against Eichmann was the 1950 Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, under which he was indicted on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in a criminal organisation. The trial was presided over by three judges: Moshe Landau, Benjamin Halevy and Yitzhak Raveh. The chief prosecutor was Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hausner, assisted by Deputy Attorney General Gabriel Bach and Tel Aviv District Attorney Yaakov Bar-Or. The defence team consisted of German lawyer Robert Servatius, legal assistant Dieter Wechtenbruch, and Eichmann himself. As foreign lawyers had no right of audience before Israeli courts at the time of Eichmann's capture, Israeli law was modified to allow those facing capital charges to be represented by a non-Israeli lawyer. In an Israeli cabinet meeting shortly after Eichmann's capture, Justice Minister Pinchas Rosen stated "I think that it will be impossible to find an Israeli lawyer, a Jew or an Arab, who will agree to defend him", and thus a foreign lawyer would be necessary.
  The Israeli government arranged for the trial to have prominent media coverage. Capital Cities Broadcasting Corporation of the United States obtained exclusive rights to videotape the proceedings for television broadcast. Many major newspapers from all over the globe sent reporters and published front-page coverage of the story. The trial was held at the Beit Ha'am (today known as the Gerard Behar Center), an auditorium in central Jerusalem. Eichmann sat inside a bulletproof glass booth to protect him from assassination attempts. The building was modified to allow journalists to watch the trial on closed-circuit television, and 750 seats were available in the auditorium itself. Videotape was flown daily to the United States for broadcast the following day.
  The prosecution case was presented over the course of 56 days, involving hundreds of documents and 112 witnesses (many of them Holocaust survivors). Hausner ignored police recommendations to call only 30 witnesses; only 14 of the witnesses called had seen Eichmann during the war. Hausner's intention was to not only demonstrate Eichmann's guilt but to present material about the entire Holocaust, thus producing a comprehensive record. Hausner's opening address began, "It is not an individual that is in the dock at this historic trial and not the Nazi regime alone, but anti-Semitism throughout history." Defence attorney Servatius repeatedly tried to curb the presentation of material not directly related to Eichmann, and was mostly successful. In addition to wartime documents, material presented as evidence included tapes and transcripts from Eichmann's interrogation and Sassen's interviews in Argentina. In the case of the Sassen interviews, only Eich
caption: Eichmann's trial judges Benjamin Halevy, Moshe Landau, and Yitzhak Raveh
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