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The world looked at Jerusalem like never before.
Around 470 journalists from all major countries had gathered: “The press center is like being in an apiary,” wrote 36-year-old Bernd Nellessen, who was supposed to follow the process for WELT.
"But a sophisticated and skillfully managed organization ensures that the measures of the Israeli government do not conflict with the wishes of the journalists."
The foreseeable most important process of the not even 13-year-old Jewish state took place in a new building that was actually planned as a cultural center, the Beit-Ha'am (“House of the People”).
It was only after the four-month process that it was converted for its actual use.
Adolf Eichmann (2nd from left) before the investigating judge on March 11, 1961
Source: picture alliance / IMAGNO / Votava
The security precautions were extreme: a five-meter-high fence surrounded the temporary courthouse, the surrounding streets were closed and there was constant patrol.
In addition, the Beit-Ha'am was illuminated throughout the night.
Fifteen small rooms had been installed at the entrance, in which journalists and other visitors had to be searched every day - the queues were long.
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The defendant's place was enclosed by a box made of bulletproof glass, right up to the wall with the door, from which two uniformed officers led him into the room every day.
The meeting schedule was tight: six and a half hours a day were to be negotiated, from Monday to Friday, with a two and a half hour lunch break.
The defendant in the armored glass box during the first day of the trial
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
But why not?
The defendant was just 55 years old, physically and mentally healthy.
And certainly the mass murderer with the most victims who would ever be brought to justice: Adolf Eichmann, former SS-Obersturmbannführer, head of the "Judenreferat" IV B 4 of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin and thus directly responsible for all measures against Jews under the control of the third party Reich including all deportations.
At the end of August 1944, Eichmann had entrusted another SS officer with a "Reich secret" under the seal of secrecy: "In the various extermination camps," according to Eichmann, according to the later key witness Wilhelm Höttl, "around four million Jews were killed, while another two million found death in another way ”.
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This statement was entirely credible, because one of Eichmann's closest collaborators had confirmed it in terms of magnitude in the Nuremberg trial of major war criminals.
The “Juden-Referent” had announced to Dieter Wisliceny in February 1945 that he would commit suicide if Hitler surrendered.
As a reason, he said, he would “jump into the pit smiling.
Because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be extremely satisfying for him ”.
A defendant who confessed himself to murdering millions of times: that had never happened before in legal history and never since.
The Israeli secret service Mossad kidnapped Eichmann after a relatively short search (although the information about his hiding place in Argentina had reached Tel Aviv in 1958, Mossad boss Isser Harel quickly put the investigation back) in May 1960 and taken to a prison near Haifa brought.
Of course, the accused complained that he had been kidnapped (which was correct) and therefore would not get a fair trial (which was not the case).
He demanded to be extradited to Germany.
From Eichmann's point of view, this would have had a clear advantage: the death penalty was abolished in the Federal Republic, but in Israel it still applied to Nazi criminals (and only to them).
From the beginning there could be no doubt that the judges in Jerusalem would impose the maximum sentence.
Robert Servatius during the Eichmann trial in 1961
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
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Robert Servatius, Eichmann's German defense attorney, also denied the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem District Court and the legitimacy of the indictment.
Because Israel had only existed since 1948, no citizens of Israel were affected by the mass murder.
Furthermore, the Israeli "Law Against Nazis and Nazi Collaborators" was not enacted until August 1, 1950;
it therefore violates the principle of “nulla poena sine lege” to indict Eichmann on account of this law.
Both were purely formalistic objections that the district court rightly brushed off the table.
To deny the Jewish state jurisdiction to prosecute the mass murder of Jewish people was absurd, and murder was of course punishable even before the Second World War - reference to Israeli law was misleading.
In fact, despite Servatius' objections, the Eichmann trial was a process based on the rule of law: the accused was adequately defended, his crimes were meticulously proven, and he was neither ill-treated nor compelled to do anything.
Front page of WELT from April 11, 1961
Source: WORLD
On the eve of the opening of the trial, Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (CDU) addressed the Germans in a televised address: "We wish that the full truth will come to light in this process and that justice will be exercised," he said - thereby setting the line for a policy of reconciliation towards Israel, which in 1965, a year and a half after his withdrawal from politics, culminated in the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Federal Republic.
In WELT, Bernd Nellessen commented on the beginning of the proceedings: "This process forces our historical insight that it would not exist if the political morality within our borders had been better decades ago." At the same time, the correspondent stated: "The Federal Republic is not standing in court.
Eichmann was one of the worst assistants of a state that called itself the Greater German Reich.
The Israelis appreciate the fact that the Federal Republic - a torso of this empire - acknowledges its historical mortgage.
But as liberating as you take note of this right now, it does not release us from our duty to reflect on our personal relationship to an ideology that once poisoned the world. ”That hit the spot.
Hannah Arendt 1959.
Source: picture alliance / KEYSTONE
One of the Federal Foreign Office's official process observers was the then 31-year-old political scientist Wolfgang Scheffler.
Far better known was the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt, who was in Jerusalem for the magazine “The New Yorker”, and was even more well known at that time.
It is interesting how these two observers perceived the self-portrayal of the accused.
Eichmann did not deny the - anyway indisputable - murder actions, but invoked the principle of command and obedience, which absolved him of guilt in the legal sense.
In any case, he was only a "cog in the system".
This was refuted by documents and testimony that demonstrated Eichmann's central role in the Jewish (murder) policy of the Nazi state.
Nonetheless, Eichmann's self-portrayal focused most of the public's attention.
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Arendt coined the formula of the "banality of evil", but was thoroughly misunderstood.
Because, if you read her book and not only this formula, she was of the opinion that Eichmann was the “greatest criminal of his time”, but at the same time a “buffoon”.
It was not for nothing that she wanted to see the English word “banality” in the German translation of her book not with “banality” but with “wickedness”.
With the powerful subtitle, however, it did not prevail.
Scheffler told WELT in 1999, almost 40 years after the trial, that "Eichmann's submissive, rasping, obedient voice with a strong Austrian accent" burned himself in most of all: "Eichmann tried to approach the court with the same attitude that he did also showed his superiors before 1945.
In this respect, the Eichmann trial somewhat conceals the busyness that this man has shown. "
Already in the April 20, 1961 edition of WELT, Bernd Nellessen expressed the zeal of Eichmann and accomplices to destroy people as “gently” as possible: “They didn't want to see blood, but they felt responsible for the murder of millions . "
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