The Adolf Eichmann Trial - Justice in Jerusalem | Free Documentary History

jerusalem april 11 1961. the trial opening here today is destined to go down in history for the first time a prominent nazi criminal will have to answer to his victims thanks to live coverage and daily rebroadcasts in various countries television is turning this trial into one of the first global mass media events for the first time the survivors of the genocide will finally be given a voice and the trial will examine one man's guilt in the greatest crime against humanity of the 20th century israeli head of state david ben-gurion wanted this trial to be the jewish people's nuremberg its impact will exceed his expectations it will engrave the jewish genocide in the collective consciousness all eyes are fixed on the man taking his place in the glass cage protecting him from an act of individual vengeance his name is adolf eichmann now 55 years old from 1939 to 1945 he was in charge of the department of jewish affairs section 4b4 of the sd the third reich security service headed by reinhard heydrich the vanguard of genocide eichmann spent his whole career in the ss and the sd from january 1942 onwards his main task was to organize the transportation of jewish men women and children to the death camps and thence to the gas chambers [Music] is [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] a year before the trial began when ben-gurion announced eichmann's capture in buenos aires where he had found asylum under a false identity the israeli prime minister accused him of being chiefly to blame for the final solution the organized murder of six million european jews [Music] a charge that gideon houstner attorney general of the state of israel will now endeavor to prove eichmann is being defended by german lawyer robert cervatius who in 1945 had defended circle and bronte at nuremberg it is he who opens the proceedings foreign [Music] the statement which his lawyer calls a breach of procedure was signed by eichmann when he was being secretly held captive by a mossad commando group recognized by a jewish family eichmann had been hunted for a long time before being captured at home one may evening in 1960 [Music] while the commandos were awaiting the arrival of the el-al plane to take him to israel eichmann signed a document consenting to be tried by an israeli court after the collapse of the third reich eichmann goes to northern germany he works under a false name and a false identity as a as a laborer a forester and somewhere around 1948 49 he makes contact with the underground network that is helping ss men to escape from europe to south america he gets some of the papers that he needs and in 1950 in july he finally boards a ship in genoa that takes him to buenos aires in argentina he was able to bring his wife vera and the boys to join him in the late 1950s the hunt for nazi war criminals was not the israeli government's top priori bauer chief prosecutor for the west german state of hesse had tipped off israel to eichmann's presence in argentina next a mossad investigator zia aharoni whose family had been massacred by the nazis traveled alone to buenos aires his assignment was to make sure that the man living on garibaldi street under the name ricardo clement was indeed adolf eichmann only after repatriating ahroni's photographs did the mossad send a commando unit to argentina charged with confirming his identity capturing him and bringing him to israel kidnapped on may 11 1960 held captive in the cellar of a safe house rented by the israeli agents he immediately admitted he was adolf eichmann oh my name is the el al plane was scheduled to arrive the mossad agents took turns guarding and interrogating eichmann in the hideout the man they had captured bore no resemblance to the monster they had imagined i thought i would see some sort of personality he wasn't but then then he was not in in his full capacity he was a prisoner it's not the same like sitting behind the desk and giving orders [Music] days after eichmann signed a statement agreeing to a trial in israel the plane touched down in buenos aires the former nazi was drugged and like the commandos dressed in an all uniform in order to get through security checks without a hitch when he came to the airport attachment the doctor was sitting next to him with a syringe in his arm because we wanted to make him dizzy and he came half asleep and so we told the guard we have a sick man with us she said oh god i'm gone and we took him up the stairs to the aeroplane the ark of god was helping him with the elbow so eichmann didn't actually walk up to the airplane he was carried but looked like being walked and immediately we had the bed prepared for him and he fell asleep we woke up in tel aviv california is ben-gurion's announcement came like a thunderbolt triggering debate in the media all over the world [Music] do you as a german jew like the idea of eichmann being tried in israel no i don't like it at all even so i'm personally concerned about it because i lost my whole family here in germany at various camps i don't think there's any legal basis for it whatsoever and i don't think it will serve any purpose possibly if they would want to have a trial they possibly should have had an international court but in no case whatsoever should he be tried by an israeli yuri do you think that eichmann should be tried in israel well i think he should be tried in israel because israel is the country where the victims now live at the republic where all the victims of our of hitler's and our guild is now mr forces perhaps we could begin with you i think there's a legal point which sticks in many people's throat about this eichmann case the man was kidnapped in uh argentina and dragged quite unwillingly to stand trial in israel does this cast a doubt in anywhere on the legality of this trial no he was kidnapped and his kidnapping was unlawful complained about this to the united nations israel went there to answer the charges the whole matter was debated and settled uh to the satisfaction of the parties and there's no outstanding complaint there but what about this idea which many jews have that the one effect of this trial will be to increase anti-semitism i doubt it you can't cause anti-semitism by this trial you can only stimulate it where it already exists i don't think one can take into account the reactions of the pathological antisemite the trial was to be held in a theater the house of the people of jerusalem [Music] it was transformed into a courtroom with a glass cage built for the defendant it would become inextricably linked to his image in the media [Music] hearing ben gurion's announcement on the radio american producer milton fruchtman had the idea of filming the trial i had been in jerusalem working for nbc on a film a biography of the the prime minister david ben-gurion nbc had sent the copy of the film to ben-gurion and he in turn wrote me a letter saying that it was fair and objective and if i happen to be in jerusalem in the future he'd be happy to see me and so i thought well here's my opportunity i will see him at the time there was no television in israel ben gurion had always been against it but as fruchmen had secured a deal for daily broadcasts with several television stations notably in west germany and the us the israeli prime minister allowed himself to be persuaded these broadcasts would take the trial beyond the courtroom to reach an international audience sessions would therefore be filmed on condition that the cameras be neither visible nor audible so as to avoid disturbing the proceedings or influencing the witnesses they had to be hidden i received a letter from the israeli government saying that had been decided that four cameras at the most could be set up in the courtroom until the start of the trial and i had built the control room and the recording studio and had the four cameras in the courtroom attached to all of that equipment next fruchtman had to find a filmmaker capable of directing the program when the war ended leo had been hired by cbs to help them create a new television network television was just beginning it was just in its infancy and television production hadn't been invented they really didn't know how to take five cameras and switch between them live the way television happens all the time now and leo was uh hired to help create the art of television to help create the art and technique of television which he did as the eichmann trial began to take shape milton frischmann was looking for somebody who could train a crew from the ground up and leo had done that he'd done that in cbs so freshmen knew leo could do that innovative videotape recording technology still in its infancy would make it possible every night to dispatch tapes filmed that day to lots of countries we recorded over one thousand miles of videotape excerpts of the trial were sent to 56 countries throughout the world that had television and about 35 other countries that did not have television showed it on film in theaters as part of their newsreel so the material was seen everywhere in the world [Music] foreign prosecutor gideon houstner sees the trial developing on two fronts first of all the survivors must have their say speaking out will enable them to break out of the ostracism visited on them by the young jewish state it will also lift the shroud of silence that has cloaked the world since the genocide the next job will be to try an uncommon criminal according to the strict rule of law foreign upon arriving in israel eichmann had been detained in a fortified camp near haifa an investigating team made up of attorneys and detectives known as bureau 6 was formed to build the case against eichmann gavriel bach the young assistant prosecutor was amongst them for nine months i was in charge of the investigation then after that i appeared together with the attorney general guidon hausner we appear together in the trial and also on appeal so actually for two years i spent full time with the uh with the with the ajma trial you know the question is how how to how to prepare such a case which we never had such a such a thing not of that size and not of that seriousness uh before it was a bit difficult at first to get witnesses many of them didn't want to talk about it they had put it aside they had not talked to their families i insisted there should at least be one life witness from every country but the main case was still of course documents because aishman was head of the jewish department of the gestapo all during the war and all the main decisions were covered by documents written by him or his immediate superiors or his company or his department and there of course the main case rested on the question of documents eichmann had signed hundreds of documents all of them incriminating but for all that could he personally be blamed for the final solution the systematic murder of all the jews in europe at the 1945 nuremberg trials oyce the commandant of auschwitz and viz lasseni one of his subordinates had designated eichmann as the prime we haven't yet heard have we what happened to these jews from hungary and had tried to blame eichmann for everything that happened to the jews they were completely innocent the deportations the death camps the concentration camps all of this had been the responsibility of adolf eichmann it was a blame game everyone wanted to blame eichmann and eichmann of course in 1946-47 was not there to defend his name and when eichmann hears about these accusations and claims he's absolutely shocked and he's very angry because he realizes that this testimony is going to get him into trouble if he's ever caught yet eichmann's career at the head of department 4b4 the department of jewish affairs seemed to confirm the testimonies of ice and vessels in 1938 eichmann had been charged with looting and deporting austria's jews next he had made several reports to his superiors on the extermination of jews in eastern europe by the groupen the mobile death squads he had also planned the vance conference in january 1942 where nazi leaders ratified the final solution from then on jews would be murdered in gas chambers rather than mass graves or gas vans after the vance conference eichmann had been in charge of the deportation of jews throughout nazi-occupied europe to the death camps and he continued in that capacity until the end of the war i think i was most interested for instance to get documents from poland because there were the death camps and i wanted to know what evidence there is about the death camps and how they worked and what happened there now the polish government at that time was not very pro-israel and they gave instructions that no one should cooperate with us uh in this in the preparation of the trial but many people wanted to help us so they sent us anonymous letters so i never forget one day i received a letter which was typed out pages of all the number of jews that were sent were got to to auschwitz and the numbers that were given on put on their arms now in a criminal case how can i try to use this thing like this so i asked for a meeting of all the police officers and i showed them that i said look there are hundreds of people from auschwitz are alive they still have the number on their arms now they know when they arrived in auschwitz so if you say let's say all the people in july 42 who came to to to auschwitz should come to the police and examine their numbers and ask them when they arrived and then see whether the document in fact is a true one i had not yet finished saying that and the police officer in charge of poland pulled up his sleeve of his shirt and he showed us a number and he said i came to auschwitz in november 43 and this is my number and it fits exactly with what's written there 161 hundred thirty-five zeraya hashem michael goldman a survivor of the genocide whose number was on the list had emigrated to israel after the war where he became a police officer he was one of the chief investigators in bureau 6. [Music] [Music] among the very first to testify is avner les the senior officer who led the bureau 6 questioning both gallery and defendant listened to ekman's voice answering the policeman's questions on tapes eichmann explains his duties as the head of department 4b4 looking to mitigate his responsibility by claiming that all he did was follow orders from himmler and mueller his superior officers [Music] foreign [Music] um eichmann's guilt was one of the fundamental issues of his trial but not the only one until then the genocide had been considered an aggravating circumstance of nazi war crimes no survivors had been summoned to give evidence at the nuremberg trials in jerusalem they would come from all over the world to talk about the genocide from the crystal nacht to the massacres on the eastern front and then in the death camps for israel it was essential that their story be heard during the trial for the world to be made aware of the atrocities committed but there were also domestic motives troubling israeli society at the time um foreign do you see in this courtroom the little boy who received these whippings yes is this officer goldman sitting right next to me yes this is officer goldman foreign a is having the survivors testify would make them a part of israeli society [Music] the immigrants from eastern europe who founded the jewish homeland in the 1920s had fled the ghettos and pogroms in palestine they became pioneers [Music] to survive they took up arms and fought the british and then the arab armies [Applause] our young people many of the young people did not want to hear about the holocaust some of the israeli children of the young tribe young pupils where didn't want to hear about it because they were somehow felt a shame a young israeli can understand that in fighting you can be heard that you can be killed and you can lose a battle he can understand that but he cannot understand how hundreds of thousands and millions of people can be brought to a slaughter bank without without active opposition and they didn't that's why they didn't want to hear about it and rather feeling the victims of the genocide jews who had given up and gone like lambs to the slaughter as the saying went went against the heroic image of jewish renewal in israel as a result israeli authorities were careful to emphasize their acts of bravery symbolized by resistance in the ghettos yes was one of the leaders of the jewish resistance in the ghetto in vilnius lithuania m [Music] m my foreign foreign foreign foreign the partisan's bravery was real but paled in the context of the catastrophe it was of secondary importance the survivors were victims first and foremost we showed how the systematic almost scientific way in which the germans managed to mislead people whether they were jews or gypsies or russian commissars obviously how people were prevented from defending themselves because they were misled until the very last moment and then they were weakened to such an extent that they couldn't exit couldn't resist and so on and there was no reason to be ashamed to get out from the concentration camp at this time to escape from the concentration camp was of no problem at all one could escape easily the only thing what it was the problem that one if one escaped they shot 10 people from your brigade and they brought all your family and relatives and hang them in the street so at this time still most of us had family in the city michael potlik was part of a team assigned to clear the gas vans of corpses eastern europe invaded by the nazis in june 1941 had been the laboratory of the holocaust jews were killed by mass shootings and in gas vans this was before the industrial scale murder of the death camps [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign is [Applause] journalists in the front of the gallery like legal correspondent federico are staggered when they hear the horrors of the showa for the first time their media reports reflect this of eichmann is important because for the first time the full narrative of the persecution of the jews mass murder and genocide was set out very clearly very dramatically and it was the first time that the world heard the voices of the victims her testimony on a large scale day after day people testifying to terrible terrible things that had previously not been recorded that were not available to the wider public deported to auschwitz-birkenau in december 1943 yehuda bacon was assigned to various work details inside the extermination camp he witnessed the gassing of his father he was 14 years old foreign [Music] foreign an auschwitz survivor who became a successful writer in israel has difficulty coming to terms with the hell of the extermination camp his poetic descriptions are hard to follow [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] hazard foreign 90s during the witnesses testimony a commotion occasionally breaks out in the courtroom some in the gallery target eichmann other jewish witnesses are accused of having collaborated with their executioners eichmann had traveled to budapest to supervise the deportation of the hungarian jews in 1944 when fulham fredericka was one of the jewish community leaders an offer was made to trade one million jewish lives for ten thousand trucks joel brand who is in charge of the negotiation tried to convince the allies to agree to ackman's proposal but failed during his testimony frederick is insulted and accused of treason [Applause] [Music] foreign there were some people you know who who say that there were some jewish leaders for instance in in poland they were sometimes forced to prepare lists of people who of jews to be sent to the to the to the to the camps to the death camps and they were told that if they do that then they themselves and their families will be saved and some of them refused but some of them did they did that and saved in order to save them their lives and their families very difficult to criticize people for what they did under this very particular you know a situation [Music] two months after the trial began 111 survivors have testified and the prosecution rests time for the defense to present its case now resounds in the courtroom as he responds to questioning from his lawyer before initially eichmann describes at length the inspections he carried out in the east between 1941 and 1942 he saw the massacres perpetrated by the mobile death squads but denies any involvement in them is throughout his cross-examination eichmann maintains the same defense he was merely a civil servant carrying out orders from his superiors and he bore absolutely no responsibility for the final solution or its implementation his duties were strictly limited to the matter of transport the contents of the railway carriages or their destination were outside his purview the prosecution failed to prove eichmann's responsibility for the einstein's group and massacres of jewish civilians in the former soviet union by examining the role played by the former nazi at the vance conference the prosecutor sought to demonstrate his involvement in the decision to exterminate european jewry by the end of 1941 hydris sent out invitations to a meeting to be held at vanza a suburb of berlin at which senior civil servants who had to work together would be collected and they would be briefed this new policy the purpose of the ransay conference then was to coordinate the mass murder of all the jews of europe eichmann knowingly willingly takes upon himself the job of administering genocide killing millions of jews does this bother him he says voluntarily and he repeats it when he's interrogated that because the leaders of the right had decided that all the jews of europe all the jews under german control would be murdered because they had decided he was just the faithful civil servant he did what he he was told he did his job he tried to do it well questioned about his role at the bonsai conference eichmann confines himself to describing the mood at the table where heydrich muller and the other chief administrators of the genocide were meeting according to him he was merely serving as secretary and never contributed to the discussions [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign eichmann had played no part in opting for and planning the final solution yet the vanci conference determined the course of his life and the key role he played in the mass murder of the jews in a phrase that he used transporting jews to the butcher he was not responsible for the death camps all the shooting squads but it was going to be out of eichmann who organized the rounding up of the jews the transportation of the jews this made him a central figure in genocide that was his rubicon despite eichmann's insistence that his duties were limited to the technical aspects of conveying jews to the death camps prosecutor houstner's cross-examination highlighted eichmann's personal commitment to the mission obviously he was determined to keep the trains rolling no matter what the fate of the jewish children rounded up in paris deported to the gas chambers at birkenau in august 1942 is one of the turning points in the trial georges velez researcher at the institute pasteur was a prisoner in drone sea alongside the children leave roundup eichmann had given the order to send them to auschwitz the camp where veterans would be interned uh [Music] [Music] [Music] but he denies instigating the decision he maintains that himmler alone had such authority all eichmann did was follow orders [Music] said in 1944 when you came to auschwitz did you then see any one of these children alive before the trial when i was in charge of the investigation i never forget that day i was sitting in my office there in this in this prison and i was reading the autobiography of rudolph huss woodward was the commander of auschwitz [Music] this man was executed in 1948 before his execution he wrote his autobiography and i read that on that day and i read that he described how they had many days on which they had to kill a thousand jewish children a day and he described how the children sometimes used to kneel down and ask to be saved and he wrote when i had to push the children into the gas chambers my knees were getting a bit wobbly but then he added but i always afterwards felt ashamed of this weakness of mine after i talked to uber and fura adolf aishman at his rank in the uss because aishman explained to me that it's especially the children that have to be killed first he says because where is the logic that you kill a generation of older people and you live alive a generation of possible avengers who can afterwards create that race again now maybe that's not devoid of some kind macabre kind of logic but 10 minutes after i read that people told me ichvan wants to see you and i never forget i heard his steps outside and when he was sitting opposite me like you people are sitting now it was a bit difficult to keep a poker face well i just read that about the necessity of killing killing jewish children i mean that was my my first meeting with him mr rommel adolf eichmann has said repeatedly on the witness stand in his own defense that the fail is the fail to use the german phrase orders or orders how would you as the son of a field marshal yourself interpret that defense he says that is to say this is nonsense this says a man which has no ethic ideas and if he says that he couldn't escape this is wrong also in a dictatorship it's a very simple way to escape this is a in a war from executing such orders this is a way to from my experience i can say that nobody would have been killed shot or hanged in the third right when he would have said yes i want to give my life at the front line i don't want to have this job i can do it i cannot do it give it to anybody who is not able to fight i want to fight but this of course is a very difficult thing fighting on the front line means losing millennium foreign [Applause] uh [Applause] my father set up a camera that looked right into iceman's face he provided the close-up that asked the question who was iceman how could he how could he be dispassionate is that leo provided a kind of personalization of the question raised by the eichmann trial leo could not believe the iceman's uh ability to look dispassionately at the at this catalog of horror that was being described in front of him and the fact was eichmann's face his dispassionate face was an icon for the dispassion of the german machine the german fascist machine which could do all this without emotion only towards the end of the trial does eichmann's true self emerge clearly he was not a mere bureaucrat devoid of free will he was a fanatical nazi carrying out his mission for as long as possible in march 1944 eichmann had been sent to budapest to supervise the deportation of 474 000 hungarian jews to auschwitz orders from himmler to cease the deportations because the nazis had already lost the war and this is when eichmann chose to disobey transcriptions from a post-war interview with willem sasson confirm eichmann's guilt in 1956 a journalist by the name of willem sasson who was half german half dutch she'd served in the waffen ss during the war primarily as a propagandist as a journalist and who had fled to argentina after the war like many nazis came across eichmann william sasson had a number of interviews with him and in these conversations eichmann boasts about his role in the final solution he describes himself as an idealist he said that at the end of the war he gathered his men together in the ruins of berlin and he told them that he would gladly jump into his grave knowing that he had taken five million enemies of the reich the jews with him he boasted about the good times in hungary he lamented how difficult it had been in denmark and part of the time in france and he said that if he had not achieved the entire annihilation of all the 10.3 million jews um in europe it was a sign of personal weakness and also because of all the faction fighting within the nazi movement and within the head office of the ss and he regretted his weakness and his failure his failure to do what his failure to utterly annihilate all of the jews so when these tapes were used at his trial the effect was absolutely devastating [Music] [Music] [Music] in hungary in 1944 he behaves with almost demonic energy going to see the trains loaded up making sure that the last jews are deported at the last possible moment but i think that by that stage of the war of his career he had identified totally with his policy he couldn't think of himself as functioning in any other way at that moment he certainly does display energy initiative fanaticism foreign foreign [Music] is i argue that eichmann was a thinking human being who made choices informed choices i think that at vansay he knew he was being asked to organize a genocide what we would call a genocide today and he took on that job knowingly voluntarily this was not the action of a stupid man a dull man a banal bureaucrat a a robot this was the action of someone who thought carefully about what he was doing and the reason eichmann is such an awful human being is that he decided to do what he did do knowing it was wrong knowing that it was you might say evil isn't it [Music] price is is [Music] [Music] be on december 11 1961 eight months to the day after the trial began the court handed down its verdict the defendant was found guilty of crimes against the jewish people crimes against humanity and war crimes adolf eichmann was sentenced to death the decision and on march 28 1962 his appeal was rejected he then petitioned the israeli president for a pardon which was refused on may 31st eichmann became the symbol of the final solution even though he was not its architect as ben gurion and houstner had tried to demonstrate his personality still arouses controversy and conjecture eichmann was neither a simple bureaucrat a cog in the machine of the final solution nor was he the incarnation of evil his attitude throughout the trial attested to his extraordinary self-control the energy and intelligence he mustered to defend himself and his utter lack of empathy for his victims but his trial would go beyond examination of his personality or guilt it brought to light the individual grief of the survivors freed them to speak for the first time and drew worldwide attention to the genocide the eichmann trial enabled those survivors voices to become part of history [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign um [Music] is m m [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - History

Views: 206,752

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, History Documentary, Adolf Eichmann, Adolf Eichmann Documentary, Adolf Eichmann Trial, Holocaust, Holocaust Documentary, Shoah, Shoah Documentary, Operation Finale, ODESSA, World War 2, WW2, WW2 Documentary, Trial of the Century, Israel, Mossad, Simon Wiesenthal, Fritz Bauer

Id: _QrCxa8IAFo

Length: 88min 54sec (5334 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022