The trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major architects of the Final Solution, began in Jerusalem in April and heard harrowing testimonies from survivors of the Shoah. He was sentenced to death in December.
The Mossad tracked him down in Argentina, kidnapped him and brought him to Israel.
The cartoon alludes to the bolted cattle-wagons that transported Jews ‘to the East’ – to concentration and often extermination camps. It depicts an imprisoned Eichmann arriving in Israel.
The caption reads: ‘The Final Transport’.
- 12 Jan
Mapam’s Aharon Cohen goes on trial on espionage charges
- 23 Jan
Workers strike for a half-hour symbolic protest against price increases
- 31 Jan
Ben-Gurion resigns because of inquiry exoneration of Pinhas Lavon
- 1 Feb
Adolf Eichmann indicted on 15 charges
- 17 Feb
Veteran socialist Zionist Manya Shochat dies aged 81
- 15 Mar
US Export–Import Bank authorises $25 million credit for Israel
- 16 Mar
Remains of David Raziel, former head of the Irgun, reinterred in Jerusalem
- 2 Apr
Begin welcomes admission of Herut’s trade union affiliate into Histadrut
- 11 Apr
The trial of Adolf Eichmann opens in Beit Ha’am in Jerusalem
- 13 Apr
Israelis observe a two-minute silence on Yom Ha’Shoah
- 18 Apr
Eichmann trial prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, completes a nine-hour speech
- 25 Apr
General Zionists and Progressives merge to form the Liberal party
- 30 Apr
Schools reopen after a 55-day strike by teachers
- 14 May
Haredim protest outside a Petah Tiqva theatre over Shabbat performance
- 18 May
Military analyst Israel Beer charged with spying for the Soviet Union
- 23 May
Knesset approves changes in election law to hinder splinter parties
- 30 May
Israel’s nuclear programme discussed by Ben-Gurion and Kennedy in USA
- 29 June
Yaacov Sharett, First Secretary of the Moscow Embassy, expelled from the USSR
- 5 July
Shavit-2 rocket launched for meteorological purposes
- 7 July
Israel Shochat, founder of Hashomer, dies aged 75
- 15 July
Haredim stone hospital bus despite dispensation for Shabbat travel
- 30 July
Cornerstone for Israel’s second deepwater harbour laid at Ashdod
- 31 July
Millionth immigrant arrives since the establishment of the state in 1948
- 15 Aug
Israel’s fifth election takes place in 2,600 polling stations
- 23 Aug
Ben-Gurion’s Mapai emerges as the largest party despite losing five seats
- 19 Sept
Large-scale demonstration by Israeli Arabs over killing of five youths
- 10 Oct
12 per cent income tax loaned to government to pay cost of immigrant absorption
- 15 Oct
Boycott of the sale of Lucky Strike and Pall Mall cigarettes in Israel lifted
- 27 Nov
Ben-Gurion states that Israel cannot ignore South Africa’s apartheid
- 15 Nov
Eichmann sentenced to death by hanging by Jerusalem District Court
- 15 Nov
Martin Buber argues that Eichmann’s sentence should be life imprisonment
Lavon resigned under pressure, but Ben-Gurion’s stand had antagonised many. The Progressives, Mapam and Ahdut Ha’Avoda all refused to serve in a government headed by him. New elections became likely rather than a new coalition.
The election was set for 15 August and Lavon’s name was not on the list of Mapai candidates. Yet a month before the election, the cabinet reaffirmed its decision to absolve Lavon of all responsibility for ‘the security mishap’ in 1954.
In mid-August, Israelis voted for fourteen party lists. Mapai received forty-two seats, losing five. Both the Communists and the new Liberal party, formed by the merger of the General Zionists and the Progressive party, gained seats. Menahem Begin’s Herut remained at seventeen seats – only three extra compared with the first election. In addition, Begin’s cultivation of the General Zionists seemed to have failed. However, the bitterness generated by the Lavon affair continued: it took almost three months to form a new government under Ben-Gurion.
At the end of January, the Knesset passed amendments which provided special arrangements for the forthcoming trial of Adolf Eichmann. During the third reading, a clause was added which revived a law from the period of the British Mandate. This provided for the implementation of death sentences by hanging. Capital punishment had been abolished with the exception of treason during times of war and for Nazi crimes.
Eichmann’s indictment listed seven counts of crimes against humanity, four against the Jewish people, one war crime and three charges of belonging to Nazi organisations. This was in accordance with the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Punishment Act of 1950.
Eichmann’s role in coordinating deportations from all corners of the Reich to the extermination centres after the Wannsee Conference was at the forefront of charges directed at him. He was charged with not only ‘enslaving, starving, deporting, persecuting and incarcerating Jews in ghettoes and concentration camps under inhuman conditions of humiliation, starvation, overcrowding and torture’, but also deporting half a million Poles and 14,000 Slovenes to make way for German settlers. The West German War Crimes Office stated that some 80,000 Germans had taken part in the mass murder of Jews.
In an interview in Yediot Aharonot, Ben-Gurion commented that Eichmann’s personal fate was unimportant, but the world should be reminded of the extermination programme carried out against the Jews. ‘The heavy burden of the Nazi holocaust’ rested not only on the shoulders of the Germans, but also on England, ‘which could have saved those Jews who fled toward Israel but were not permitted to land here’’.
In a long dramatic opening speech, the Attorney-General, Gideon Hausner, began by stating that he was not alone. ‘With me are six million prosecutors. But they cannot rise to their feet and point an accusing finger towards the man who sits in the glass booth and cry out “J’accuse!”.’ Hausner described Eichmann as a new kind of killer – one who worked from behind a desk. His accomplices were ‘neither gangsters nor men of the underworld, but the leaders of a nation – including professors and scholars, robed dignitaries with academic degrees, linguists, educated persons, the “intelligentsia”’.
Listing the fate of Jewish communities, country by country, Hausner related individual examples of the murder of a third of all Jews. He also paid tribute to specific individuals – such as the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg – and resistance groups – the French Maquis, the Yugoslav partisans, the Belgian underground – who tried their best to rescue Jews.
Hausner’s nine-hour-long opening speech gripped Israel’s citizens. Within a month of the commencement of the trial, 15,000 Israelis had visited the courtroom, while another 30,000 had followed the proceedings on a large closed-circuit television screen.
Survivors provided the bulk of testimonies. Itzik Remba, the editor of the Herut daily, criticised the testimonies of Zivia Lubetkin and Abba Kovner, Jewish resistance fighters in Eastern Europe, for playing down the role of Betar and right-wing movements in general. Two witnesses with a Nazi past were given immunity so that they could testify.
On 13 December, Hausner demanded the death penalty for Eichmann, a defendant who ‘does not deserve mercy’. The Jerusalem District Court’s guilty verdict was reflected in a widespread approval in the Israeli media and rejected any suggestion that he should not receive the death penalty. In a final statement to the court, Eichmann blamed ‘the political leaders’ of Germany. ‘My only guilt was my discipline, my obedience, my adherence to my oath. I never persecuted Jews from any desire on my part.’.
President Ben-Zvi had the ability to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. While many people wrote to urge him to allow the sentence to stand, several members of the Israeli intelligentsia argued that Eichmann should not be executed. These included Avigdor Arikha, Yehuda Bacon, Leah Goldberg, Zwi Werblowsky, Helena Kagan, Natan Rotenstreich and Gershom Scholem.
The German Jewish poet Nelly Sachs similarly argued that Eichmann should not be hanged. Martin Buber, the philosopher, originally from Germany, argued that his sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment. Herut members on Tel Aviv Council argued that Buber should now not be awarded the municipality’s award for literature for his work Hidden Light. The ceremony went ahead a few days after the end of the trial.
Others feared that any execution would give rise to a new wave of anti-Semitism, while yet others suggested that Eichmann should be transferred to Poland for execution.
In November, a split opened up between Israel and the Jewish community in South Africa when Israel voted in favour of censuring a speech by South Africa’s foreign minister, Eric Louw. Israel then supported other states in condemning apartheid, labelling the system as ‘reprehensible and repugnant’. Israel, however, did abstain on a Pakistani motion to stop selling arms to South Africa. It also opposed expelling South Africa from the UN.
In part this was due to both genuine support by Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir’s cultivation of newly independent African states. Prime Minister Verwoerd, however, responded strongly and asked whether Israel was genuinely against the idea of separate development. Why not merge, therefore, with the surrounding Arab states into one single state? Verwoerd made such comments in a letter to a supporter – and ominously pointed out that many South African Jews favoured the Progressives rather than his own National party. In the Knesset debate, both Herut and Agudat Yisrael, while rejecting apartheid, condemned Israel’s approach at the UN. Ben-Gurion responded that ‘we would not have been true to ourselves, to our moral heritage and to our position in the family of nations if we had not joined in this protest’.
