10. Jacob Robinson, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight (New York: Macmillan, 1968), p. 138; Leora Bilsky, Transformative Justice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2004), p. 111.
11. Moshe Prager in Davar, May 12, 1961, in Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 96.
12. Ben-Gurion quoted in Yechiam Weitz, “The Holocaust on Trial: The Impact of the Kasztner and Eichmann Trials on Israeli Society,” Israel Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (Fall 1996), p. 17.
13. Hanna Yablonka, “The Development of Holocaust Consciousness in Israel,” Israel Studies, vol. 8, no. 3 (Fall 2003), p. 11; Dorothy Rabinowitz, New Lives (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), pp. 18–19.
14. Hannah Yablonka, The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann (New York: Schocken, 2004), p. 231.
15. Ibid., p. 165; Hanna Yablonka, “Development,” pp. 16–17.
16. Gouri, Facing the Glass Booth, pp. 274–75.
17. Ravikovitz in Ezrahi, By Words Alone, p. 206; Bilsky, Transformative Justice, p. 97.
18. Anita Shapira, “The Eichmann Trial,” in After Eichmann, ed. Cesarani, p. 33; Alan Mintz, “Foreword,” Gouri, Facing the Glass Booth, pp. x-xi; Hanna Yablonka, Israel vs. Eichmann, p. 162; Bilsky, Transformative Justice, p. 102.
19. Yablonka, Israel vs. Eichmann, pp. 248–49; EIJ, p. 271.
20. Bruno Bettelheim, “The Informed Heart,” in Out of the Whirlwind, ed. Jacob Landau (New York: UAHC, 1968) pp. 40, 44, 47; Raul Hilberg, Politics of Memory (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), pp. 154–55; Rabinowitz, New Lives, p. 174ff.
21. Paul Jacobs, “Eichmann and Jewish Identity,” New Leader, July 3, 1961, pp. 14–15.
22. Shoshana Felman, The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 127.
23. In Irving v. Penguin UK and Lipstadt my defense team decided not to call survivors as witnesses. We did not want to suggest to the judge that we needed witnesses of fact, which is what survivors would have been, in order to prove the existence of the Holocaust. We presented the Holocaust as an established fact that needed no validation. We wanted the focus to be solely on Irving and his lies. Furthermore, since Irving was representing himself, we did not want to subject elderly survivors to a cross-examination, which we feared would be designed by Irving to humiliate and confuse them.
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 second lieutenant).
March 1938 German troops enter Austria; Hitler announces that Austria is now united with Germany. Eichmann is transferred to Vienna with instructions to streamline the process of expelling Jews from Austria.
August 1938 Creation of Central Bureau for Emigration of Jews from Austria. Eichmann is in charge of this human “conveyor belt.”
November 9, 1938 Following the murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a Jew avenging his parents’ deportation from Germany to the Polish border, the Nazi regime conducts a massive, coordinated wave of violence against Reich Jewry. Known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, the event results in the murder of nearly one hundred Jews and the destruction of synagogues and Jewish personal property.
September 1939 Germany invades Poland; Britain and France declare war on Germany.
October 1939 Eichmann orchestrates the expulsion of thousands of Jews and Roma (Gypsies) from Germany, Austria, and Bohemia-Moravia to Nisko, a distant area of Poland where they endure significant hardship. Eichmann implements a previously scheduled deportation transport to Nisko even after Hitler orders a halt to the deportations.
1939–40 With the formation of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the Reich Main Security Office, Eichmann transfers from the SD (RSHA III) to the Gestapo (RSHA IV).
1941 Hannah Arendt emigrates from France to the United States. Eichmann transfers from RSHA IV D4 (deportations) to RSHA IV B4 (Jewish affairs).
September 1941 First mass gassings at Auschwitz.
November 1941 Eichmann is promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer (SS lieutenant colonel).
1941 Former mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al Husseini, after participating in a failed pro-German coup in Iraq, flees to Italy and remains in exile in Italy and Germany until the end of World War II.
December 1941 Abba Kovner, leader of the Vilna (Vilnius) resistance fighters, calls for active resistance against the Nazis.
December 1941 Gassings using vans at Chelmno, Poland.
January 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which RSHA chief and SS General Reinhard Heydrich notified other Nazi civilian leaders of plans for the Final Solution. Eichmann helps prepare Heydrich’s materials for the conference and writes up the minutes afterward.
1942–44 Eichmann, as director of the Reich Main Security Office section IV B4 (Jewish affairs), organizes the deportations of Jews from Europe, with the exceptions of the Generalgouvernement, the occupied Soviet Union, and Serbia, to killing centers, killing sites, and camps.
1944 The Polish-born jurist Raphael Lemkin publishes his Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, in which he introduces the word “genocide,” which he coined to describe the extermination of an entire people.
March 19, 1944 Germans occupy Hungary. Eichmann arrives accompanied by detachment of a dozen deportation experts with the intent of deporting all the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Austro-Hungarian border.
April–May 1944 Concentration of Hungarian Jews by Hungarian gendarmerie begins in the provinces.
May 15–July 9, 1944 Hungarian gendarmerie, working with Eichmann’s RSHA Special Detachment of SS functionaries, deports some 440,000 Hungarian Jews from Hungary. The vast majority arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the SS selects about 110,000 for forced labor and sends the rest to the gas chambers. July 7, 1944, Hungarian leader Miklós Horthy stops the deportation of Hungarian Jews. Eichmann helps contravene the order and additional trains are dispatched. (Two final trains are dispatched by Eichmann in August.)
August 18, 1944 As a res
ult of negotiations between Eichmann and Israel Kasztner, the first of two transports of Hungarian Jews leaves, ostensibly for Switzerland. The train is sent instead to Bergen-Belsen, where its passengers remain for approximately five months before they are then dispatched to Switzerland. Many of the passengers pay large sums for places on the train.
October 15, 1944 Germans support Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross coup d’état to overthrow the Horthy regime in Hungary. Eichmann returns to Budapest to organize evacuation of able-bodied Hungarian Jews by foot to the Austrian border, from whence the Germans would deploy them for forced labor. The conditions of the march and the number of corpses left on the road induced Auschwitz Commandant Rudolph Höss to complain about the brutality.
November 1944 Arrow Cross regime orders a halt to the evacuation marches. Eichmann returns to Berlin.
November 1944 Himmler orders the destruction of the gassing facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau after one of them is destroyed during an armed revolt of the Jewish inmate Sonderkommandos in October.
May 7, 1945 Germany unconditionally surrenders to the Allies. Eichmann is captured by the Allies shortly thereafter.
November 20, 1945 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, opens. Twenty-four Nazi leaders are indicted for crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against peace, and conspiracy.
August 1946 Nineteen Nuremberg defendants convicted; twelve of them sentenced to death.
November 29, 1947 United Nations votes to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.
May 14, 1948 Israel declares its independence.
1950 Eichmann, having escaped from Allied custody, leaves Germany for Argentina.
1951 Hannah Arendt publishes The Origins of Totalitarianism.
1952 Eichmann’s wife and children disappear from Germany and reappear in Argentina.
May 1953 Israel establishes Yad Vashem, a national Holocaust museum and research center.
1953 Malchiel Gruenwald publishes a leaflet accusing Israel Kasztner, by then an official of the Israeli government, of collaboration with the Nazis; the government sues Gruenwald for libel on Kasztner’s behalf.
June 22, 1955 Judge Benjamin Halevi finds in favor of Gruenwald on most counts.
March 3, 1957 Kasztner is shot by Ze’ev Eckstein; he dies of his wounds shortly thereafter.
January 17, 1958 Israel’s Supreme Court overturns Halevi’s verdict in Kasztner case, posthumously clearing his name.
May 11, 1960 Eichmann is captured by Israeli operatives in Argentina.
May 23, 1960 David Ben-Gurion announces that Eichmann is in the hands of Israeli security services and will be tried by Israel.
April 11, 1961 Eichmann trial opens in Jerusalem and is broadcast by radio and television around the world.
June 20, 1961 Eichmann speaks in his own defense at his trial.
December 11, 1961 Eichmann found guilty by the court.
December 15, 1961 Eichmann sentenced to death.
May 29, 1962 Israel’s High Court rejects Eichmann’s appeal.
May 31, 1962 Eichmann executed at midnight at Ramle Prison.
February 16, 1963 The New Yorker publishes the first of Hannah Arendt’s series of five articles on the Eichmann trial.
December 1963 Beginning of the Auschwitz trial, in which twenty-two defendants were tried in Frankfurt. The twenty-month trial was one of many and one of the most publicized trials of Nazi offenders before a West German court.
1979 A presidential order signed by Jimmy Carter establishes the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
1980 U.S. Congress funds the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
April 1993 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum dedicated in Washington, D.C.
April–July 1994 Hutu-led government of Rwanda massacres an estimated 500,000 members of the Tutsi minority.
November 8, 1994 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) established by the United Nations.
July 1995 Bosnian Serbs massacre 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in the town of Srebrenica.
September 2, 1998 In the world’s first conviction for genocide, the ICTR finds Jean-Paul Akayesu guilty of committing and encouraging others to commit acts of violence in the Rwandan town of which he was mayor.
June 10, 2009 Security officer Stephen Tyrone Johns is killed in the line of duty when the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is attacked by an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying shooter.
June 10, 2010 The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia finds two Bosnian Serbs guilty of committing genocide in Srebrenica in 1995. They are sentenced to life in prison.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank those people who read this manuscript or offered observations about the project. They include Benton Arnovitz, Steven Bayme, Havi Ben-Sasson, Peter Black, Richard Breitman, Deborah Dwork, Raye Farr, Shoshana Felman, Jenna Weissman Joselit, Anthony Julius, Maureen MacLaughlin, Antony Polansky, Eli Rosenbaum, Anita Shapira, Ken Stern, and Leah Wolfson. Their contributions made this a better book. Any shortcomings or mistakes are present despite their help. Jonathan Rosen was a magnificent editor who worked with me every step of the way. He has a unique ability to see to the heart of the matter. His passion for the project was infectious. Altie Karper saw this manuscript through the production stage and was most patient with my various delays. Terry Zaroff-Evans did a herculean job of copyediting. Michael Cinnamon did excellent bibliographic research. Maureen MacLaughlin read the manuscript closely and caught many of the errors that invariably find their way into such a work. Carolyn Hessel, who has done so very much for the world of Jewish books, was and is a faithful friend and adviser.
As I noted in the dedication, a portion of this book was written while I was in residence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Paul Shapiro, the director of the USHMM’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, and members of the center’s staff, among them Lisa Yavnai, Suzanne Brown Fleming, and Traci Rucker, were all exceptionally helpful and provided a perfect environment for scholarship and research. My special appreciation to the gracious archivist Michlean Amir and to librarians extraordinaire Vincent Slatt and Ron Coleman, all of whom were helpful well beyond the call of duty. They made my time there not only productive but very pleasant. The USHMM’s senior historian, Peter Black, carefully read and commented on much in the manuscript. Every conversation with him is a learning experience. This institution is a jewel in our nation’s crown.
At my home institution, Emory University, the University Research Committee provided crucial support that helped me complete this topic. Robert A. Paul, the then dean of Emory College, not only granted me a leave but was a wonderful conversation partner. Gary Laderman, the chair of the Religion Department, helped secure important research support. My colleagues were—as always—a delight.
Both the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee opened their libraries and archives to me. The director of the ADL’s library and research center, Aryeh Tuchman, was gracious and welcoming. Cyma Horowitz of the AJC’s library and archives was exceptionally helpful. Her retirement leaves a void that will be hard to fill. The staff of the archives at the Center for Jewish History gave me rapid access to their pertinent holdings. Andrew Ingall and Aviva Weintraub of The Jewish Museum’s National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting helped me retrieve various news broadcasts on the Eichmann trial.
Many scholars have written important works pertaining to the Eichmann trial, among them David Cesarani, Hannah Yablonka, Shoshana Felman, Lawrence Douglas, Leora Bilsky, Hans Safrian, Yechiam Weitz, and Yaacov Lozowick. I have benefitted greatly from their contributions to this topic. Though I have cited their works in my notes, they are deserving of special mention.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. She is the author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving (a National
Jewish Book Award winner); Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory; and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
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