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Trial of Adolf Eichmann | |
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![]() Adolf Eichmann (inside glass booth) is sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of Israel at the conclusion of the trial | |
Court | Jerusalem District court |
Full case name | Criminal Case 40/61 |
Decided | December 11–12, 1961 December 15, 1961 (sentence) | (verdict)
Court membership | |
Judges sitting | Moshe Landoy (presiding)
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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.[1] 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.[2] The Israeli court ruled that the circumstances of Eichmann's capture had no bearing on the legality of his trial.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6] Political philosopher Hannah Arendt reported on the trial in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. 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.[7] His trial began on 11 April 1961 and was presided over by three judges: Moshe Landau, Benjamin Halevy, and Yitzhak Raveh.[8] 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.[9]
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