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 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.[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] His trial began on 11 April 1961 and was presided over by three judges: Moshe LandauBenjamin Halevy and Yitzhak Raveh.[7] 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.[8]


presentation Section: After The War