Monday. Dec. 11, 1961 University Daily Kansan
Page 9
Crime Record Seen in Eichmann Trial
EICHMANN WAS charged with crimes on 15 counts. They accuse him of having "responsibility for carrying out a scheme for the physical destruction of the Jews... known as the 'final solution of the Jewish problem,' and having caused, with the aid of others, the killing of millions of Jews." Twelve of the charges carry the death penalty.
JERUSALEM — (UPI) — Adolf Eichmann's trial on charges of killing millions of Jews began April 11 and ended, nearly a million words later, an Aug. 14.
SERVATIUS CONTENDED the court was incompetent to try Eichmann because he had been kidnapped by Israeli agents. But the court rejected this argument April 17 and prosecutor Hausner delivered a 50,000-word opening statement.
The judges, Moshe Landau, Benjamin Halevi, and Yitzhak Raveh have been deliberating since then.
"When I stand before you, judges of Israel, I do not stand alone," he said. "Here with me stand 6,000,000 witnesses. Their blood cries to heaven, but their voice cannot be heard. Thus it falls to me...to deliver this heinous accusation in their name."
Robert Servatius, Eichmann's defense attorney, indicated he would appeal a guilty verdict. He and Eichmann maintained throughout the trial that Eichmann was "not guilty in the spirit of the indictment"—that he acted only on orders from higher officials.
Here is a summary of the trial: Eichmann was brought to the courtroom for the first time April 11. The first four days were devoted to a legal battle between Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hauser and Servatius.
On the same day, Eichmann pleaded not guilty to all 15 counts. Two days later, the court heard his tape-recorded voice saying "perhaps I should hang myself in public so that all the anti-Semites in the world can have the terrible nature of their acts made clear to them."
The prosecution said the recording was made during pre-trial interrogation by Israeli Police.
Eichmann's voice was silent for another eight weeks. He watched the court proceedings through his bullet-proof glass cubicle as Hausner brought out 1,400 documents to link Eichmann to the Nazi mass murders.
LOS ANGELES — (UPI) — Two Republican Congressmen recently said President Kennedy is not aware of the true Communist threat.
Congressmen Say Kennedy 'Not Aware'
The two are Rep. John H. Rousselet, of San Gabriel, and Rep. Edgar Hiestand, from Altadena. Both are members of the John Birch Society.
The President said at a Democratic Party fund raising dinner at the Palladium that the real peril to the nation comes from without, not from within.
Defense Spending Up
NEW YORK — (UPI) — Assistant Defense Secretary Charles J. Hitch says defense spending over the next five years may average $50 billion a year.
He assailed "Crusades of suspicion" and "discordant voices of extremism."
Secretary Hitch made the prediction recently at a conference sponsored by the Tax Foundation. Defense spending this fiscal year, ending next June 30, may come close to $47 billion.
SAVE UP TO
50%
on your
Diamond
Purchase
Daniels
Jewelry
DAN SAMPLES
914 Mass.
EICHMANN WATCHED impassively as human documentation of the Nazi crimes marched before the court-survivors of the concentration camps, some crippled and allmentally scarred by their experiences.
Their descriptions made spectators weep and cry out in anguish. Throughout their testimony, Eichmann shuffled his papers and scribbled notes.
Dr. Leon Wells described how he walked out of his own grave and then was put to work looking for his own corpse.
Mrs. Eda Lightmann said she saw her father shot. Another witness told how a mother was forced to watch her baby torn apart "like a rag doll" by an SS guard.
Another witness told of his escape from Nazi "Einsatzgruppen" execution squads and then seeing "hundreds of bodies, mostly children," floating in the Dniester river in Russia.
Others described squads of prisoners forced to burn corpses, extract gold teeth, grind the bones of the dead, and dig graves.
MUCH OF THE testimony seemed irrelevant in the strict legal sense, but the court and Israel were determined to get the whole story of the Nazi "final solution of the Jewish problem" on record for history.
Hausner closed the prosecution case June 12 by showing films taken at concentration camps. Some were made by liberators of the camps and others were secretly taken during the operations of the execution squads.
The films showed SS soldiers forcing Jews to dig their own graves and then shooting them. In other scenes, bulldozers were used to push stacked-up corpses into graves. One of the judges was so horrified by the pictures that he had to leave the courtroom.
Servatius, after a week's recess,
began his case June 20.
He put Eichmann on the stand and led him back through some of the most damaging claims by the prosecution.
Eichmann worked to create the impression that he was just a minor functionary who never made a decision of his own but faithfully carried out orders from above.
Time and again, he denied he could have been the mastermind behind the plan to exterminate European Jewry. He was "only a small cog in a big machine," he said.
ISRAELI LAW does not accept "acting on orders" as a valid reason for committing a crime. It adopted this ruling after the allied war crimes trials at Nuernberg.
On July 7, after a two-week examination by Servatius, Eichmann suddenly made an unexpected "confession," which astounded the judges and appeared to anger his attorney.
He said he was "morally guilty" because he obeyed orders to send Jews to the gas chambers, but admitted no "legal guilt."
Haussner then began his 10-day cross-examination. In its first two hours, he made some headway with Eichmann, but received only denials and lapses of memory after that.
In that short period, Eichmann admitted he knew before the end of the war he was wanted as a war criminal, that he was not really a
"friend" of the Jews as he claimed but regarded them as enemies of the Third Reich, and that he passed on extermination orders and visited death camps to see how they were being implemented.
But from then on, Eichmann refused to admit anything. His denials often brought cries of disbelief from the spectators. A half-dozen times, spectators leaped to their feet and shouted "beast," "murderer," and "swine" at Eichmann. But these incidents were comparatively rare and the court would quickly restore order.
IN HIS SUMMATIONS, Hausner called on the court to convict Eichmann for the sake of the 6,000,000 Jewish victims of the Nazis.
Servatius, replying, urged the court to dismiss the indictment, leaving the trial record as a "warning signpost for history."
"This trial should not have as its objective revenge on the accused for deeds committed by the political leadership," he said. "The conviction of the accused cannot serve as expiation for the atrocities committed."