| Court: | Jerusalem District court |
| Date Decided: | (verdict) (sentence) |
| Full Name: | Criminal Case 40/61 |
| Judge: | |
| Number Of Judges: | 3 |
| Italic Title: | no |
The Eichmann trial was the 1961 trial in Israel of major Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann who was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and brought to Israel to stand trial. The kidnapping of Eichmann was criticized by the United Nations, calling it a "violation of the sovereignty of a Member State". Israel and Argentina issued a joint statement on 3 August, after further negotiations, admitting the violation of Argentine sovereignty but agreeing to end the dispute. The Israeli court ruled that the circumstances of Eichmann's capture had no bearing on the legality of his trial. His trial, which opened on 11 April 1961, was televised and broadcast internationally, intended to educate about the crimes committed against Jews by Nazi Germany, which had been secondary to the Nuremberg trials which addressed other war crimes of the Nazi regime. Prosecutor and Attorney General Gideon 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. 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 whom had never met the defendant, for didactic purposes. 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. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt reported on the trial in her book . The book had enormous impact in popular culture, but its ideas have become increasingly controversial.
Eichmann was charged with fifteen counts of violating the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law. His trial began on 11 April 1961 and was presided over by three judges: Moshe Landau, Benjamin Halevy, and Yitzhak Raveh. 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 1 June 1962 at Ramla Prison.
From 1933 to 1945, the Jews in Europe faced systematic persecution and genocide at the hands of the Nazis in Germany and their collaborators in the Holocaust.[1] From 1941 to 1945, this persecution increased as part of the Final Solution, a plan to murder all of the Jews in Europe, which resulted in the death of some six million Jews.[2]
Eichmann played a major part in the execution of the Holocaust. He fled to Argentina at the end of the Second World War, but was abducted by Israeli Mossad agents in 1960, and transported to Jerusalem to stand trial.[3] Eichmann was held at a fortified police station in Yagur in northern Israel for nine months prior to his trial.
The trial of Eichmann was held from 11 April to 15 August 1961 at Beit Ha'am, a community theatre temporarily reworked to serve as a courtroom capable of accommodating 750 observers.[4]
Counts 1–4 were for crimes against the Jewish people:
Counts 5–7 were for crimes against humanity against Jews:
Count 8 was for war crimes, based on Eichmann's role in the systematic persecution and murder of Jews during World War II.
Counts 9–12 related to crimes against humanity against non-Jews:
Counts 13–15 charged Eichmann with membership in enemy organizations, respectively the Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP (SS), Sicherheitsdienst des Reichführers 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.