The Eichmann Trial Read Online Free Page A

himself as things of little importance. They charge that Israel aggrandized the matter for political ends. They dismiss Eichmann as simply a transportation “specialist” and fault Israel for using the trial for Zionist ends. They claim he was a bureaucratic “clown,” who really did not understand what he was doing. These differences of opinion about the Eichmann trial may well be metonyms for attitudes toward and perceptions of contemporary anti-Semitism. Some find the overt anti-Semitism of Holocaust deniers the ranting of idiots who are best ignored. Others take these comments quite seriously and see a dire and existential threat to Jewish well-being. They see a Holocaust-denying president of a large country, one that is poised to have nuclear weapons, occupying the podium of a world forum that was founded in the wake of the Final Solution with a mandate to stop genocide. They hear him deny the Final Solution and threaten the existence of the Jewish state. When they react strongly, they are cautioned by commentators and policy makers that they are overreacting or misunderstanding his charges. For them the issues that were adjudicated in Jerusalem are neither dead nor academic.
    Historians often insist that they come to their research with a tabula rasa, that they judge each situation on its merits and do not let other matters shape their perceptions. In fact, no matter how much they may deny it, their personal experiences constitute facets on the prism through which their view of past events is refracted. For the sake of her readers and herself, a historian must acknowledge their presence and try to ensure that they clarify, rather than cloud, her understanding. And so, with my own encounter with history, the law, the study of the Holocaust, and raw anti-Semitism as a backdrop, I began to explore what happened in Jerusalem five decades earlier.

 
    The Eichmann Trial

CHRONOLOGY
     
     
     
     
March 19, 1906
 
Adolf Eichmann born in Solingen, Germany, part of the Rhineland. His family moves to Austria when he is seven years old.
October 14, 1906
 
Hannah Arendt born in Hannover, Germany.
1915
 
Ottoman Empire begins to deport and massacre Armenians. The Armenian genocide, as it was later known, continues for several years, resulting in the displacement and murder of much of the Armenian population of central and eastern Anatolia.
November 2, 1917
 
The British government, having occupied Palestine, then part of the province of Syria in the Ottoman Empire, issues the Balfour Declaration, promising “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
1929
 
Arab riots in Safed and Hebron, organized by radicals in the Palestinian nationalist movement.
1931
 
Heinrich Himmler establishes the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) under Reinhard Heydrich; the Schutzstaffel (SS) unit that gathered intelligence on opponents of Hitler both within and outside the Nazi Party.
April 1, 1932
 
Eichmann joins the Nazi Party in Austria. He joins the SS seven months later.
January 1933
 
Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany.
1933–34
 
Himmler and Heydrich take over the political police forces, renamed the Gestapo. With the Gestapo’s function of combating actual political opponents of the Nazi regime, the SD, still under Heydrich’s command and tied to the Gestapo by his leadership, investigates and gathers intelligence on groups of real and perceived opponents of Nazi Germany, including the Jews.
August 1933
 
After the Austrian government begins a crackdown on the Nazi Party, Eichmann leaves for Germany.
1933
 
Hannah Arendt, fearing arrest by the Nazi regime, leaves Germany for Paris.
1934
 
Eichmann applies to join the SD and is accepted.
1935
 
Hitler issues the Nuremberg Race Laws, depriving German Jews of their citizenship.
1935
 
Eichmann transfers within the SD to section II 112, which monitors Jewish organizations.
January 1938
 
Eichmann is promoted to SS-Untersturmführer (SS