The Eichmann Trial (Jewish Encounters) [Hardcover]

Deborah E. Lipstadt (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 15, 2011 | Series: Jewish Encounters

***NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST (2012)***

Part of the Jewish Encounter series

The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a watershed moment in how the civilized world in general and Holocaust survivors in particular found the means to deal with the legacy of genocide on a scale that had never been seen before.
 
Award-winning historian Deborah E. Lipstadt gives us an overview of the trial and analyzes the dramatic effect that the survivors’ courtroom testimony—which was itself not without controversy—had on a world that had until then regularly commemorated the Holocaust but never fully understood what the millions who died and the hundreds of thousands who managed to survive had actually experienced.
 
As the world continues to confront the ongoing reality of genocide and ponder the fate of those who survive it, this trial of the century, which has become a touchstone for judicial proceedings throughout the world, offers a legal, moral, and political framework for coming to terms with unfathomable evil. Lipstadt infuses a gripping narrative with historical perspective and contemporary urgency.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For the Eichmann trial's 50th anniversary, Emory Holocaust studies professor Lipstadt (History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving) trains her gaze on this watershed event in Jewish history. Israeli attorney general Gideon Hausner, a commercial lawyer, lacked criminal or courtroom expertise, but Lipstadt contends that despite a couple of courtroom blunders, Hausner presented overwhelming incriminating evidence to prove that Eichmann's claim that he was just a low-level bureaucrat was a lie. Moreover, Hausner's decision to place victims' testimony center stage gave survivors an iconic authority. Lipstadt discounts critics who say Hausner failed to elicit an admission of guilt from Eichmann, believing it didn't matter because a confession from a brazen liar is worthless. In Eichmann's memoirs, contrary to claims made by Hannah Arendt, Lipstadt finds that he expresses himself as an inveterate Nazi and anti-Semite fully committed to his leaders' goals. Lipstadt also finds Arendt's famous New Yorker reportage on the trial disturbing because Arendt failed to reveal that she was absent for much of the trial, writing from transcripts that cannot convey subtleties of demeanor witnessed in court. This is a penetrating and authoritative dissection of a landmark case and its after effects. (Mar.)
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Review

“The Eichmann Trial makes an excellent primer on a landmark event. With impressive authority and commendable concision, Lipstadt frames and explores to its known ends the vast universe of moral quandaries thrown open by the Eichmann trial. In so doing, she makes a welcome contribution to our record of the twentieth century’s most horrifying and depressing episode.”
—The Washington Post
 
“The Eichmann Trial is both riveting and nuanced, and should be required reading for anyone who does not wish to wade through eight volumes of trial transcripts.”
—The Jerusalem Post Magazine
 
“Scrupulously researched . . . a comprehensive and serious but highly readable report of the trial [that is] nothing less than a page-turner. Beginning with Eichmann’s cloak-and-dagger capture in Argentina, through the events leading up to the trial, to the details of the trial (surprisingly fascinating, even fifty years later), Lipstadt knows how to move a story along. [She is] expert at parsing moments in history that are not easy to understand. . . . A tour-de-force.”
—The Jewish Week

“Lipstadt has done a great service by untethering the [Eichmann] trial from Hannah Arendt’s polarizing presence, recovering the event as a gripping legal drama, as well as a hinge moment in Israel’s history and in the world’s delayed awakening to the magnitude of the Holocaust. . . . Her conclusions about Eichmann in Jerusalem are rendered calmly and with devastating fairness.”
—Franklin Foer, The New York Times Book Review
 
“A thoughtfully researched and clearly written account of the courtroom proceedings and of the debates spurred by the trial.”
—David Pryce-Jones, The Wall Street Journal
 
“Contains interesting and informative insights on this historic trial . . . [it is] a valuable contribution to an ever-increasing library of Eichmann books.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books
 
“An authoritative analysis of the historical and legal issues involved in a trial of international significance. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal

“Having covered the Eichmann trial myself, I can warmly recommend Deborah Lipstadt’s important analysis of its fascinating perspectives.”
—Elie Wiesel

“A penetrating and authoritative dissection of a landmark case and its after effects.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Just in time for its fiftieth anniversary, renowned historian Deborah Lipstadt has reworked the Eichmann trial. This book is a powerfully written testimony to our ongoing fascination with the proceedings, the resonance of survivor tales, and how both changed our understanding of justice after atrocity.”
—David Gergen, professor, Harvard Kennedy School

“An excellent work of historical and political analysis by an accomplished writer. Compellingly written, it grips the reader from its opening pages. With this book, Deborah Lipstadt consolidates her standing as one of the major figures in the Jewish world today.”
—Anthony Julius, author of Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Schocken (March 15, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805242600
• ISBN-13: 978-0805242607
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #88,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > Law > Legal History
  • #69 in Books > Law > Specialties
  • #83 in Books > History > Middle East > Israel

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

97 of 101 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Unflinching history and a new classic March 16, 2011

By G. Ware Cornell Jr. TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

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On the last day of the sixth grade in 1962, as my mother was taking me home from school, the news on the radio was that Adolf Eichmann had been hanged in Israel. If there was a defining moment that influenced my choice of a career and course of study, it would be that car ride.I started reading that afternoon. Each question I had only led to more questions. At first I did not know who Eichmann was.Then, I could not understand how he had been prosecuted in a country which was not even in existence during the Second World War. I wanted to know how the Israelis had gotten hold of him. I was fascinated by the glass booth.

I became a history major at Emory where I continued my struggle with the Eichmann trial. In law school at Georgia I studied international law with Professor Dean Rusk who had been Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Professor Rusk set forth the legal basis for any country to prosecute crimes against humanity. After law school I served as a law clerk to a federal judge where issues of the application of laws for extra-territorial crimes were often present.

In short, I thought I knew all I needed to know to answer the questions which perplexed me as a twelve year old. Professor Lipstadt has proved me wrong.

This is a magnificent account of the crimes, capture, confinement, trial, appeal and execution of Adolf Eichmann. Professor Lipstadt, who teaches history at Emory, was given access to Eichmann's memoir in the 1990s during her own defense of an English libel trial brought by a Holocaust denier. But for that access it is doubtful this important work would have ever come to be.

Lipstadt unflinchingly examines the myths, realities and politics of these events. Simon Wiesenthal's claim of involvement in Eichmann's capture from Argentina is debunked. The American Jewish Committees peculiar reticence to the indictment and trial is explored. The Argentine government even gets a surprising semi-kudo when she demonstrates it observed Eichmann's takedown and did nothing to interfere with the Mossad team.

Historians and lawyers will find answers to many questions in these readable and engrossing pages.

59 of 64 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant historical analysis March 19, 2011

By jsa TOP 1000 REVIEWER

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On a trip to Israel several years ago, I visited Beit Lohame Hagetaot ("The Ghetto Fighters' House"), the first museum in the world dedicated to the Holocaust. Beit Lohame Hagetaot, which is located on Lohame Hagetaot, a kibbutz near the border of Lebanon that was founded in 1949 by Holocaust survivors, including several from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, has an extensive collection including many items which are on loan to the more famous Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem. One artifact that the Ghetto Fighters' House retained to display in its own facility is perhaps the most chilling of the objects and images I've seen at either museum - the infamous three-sided "glass booth" that surrounded Adolf Eichmann during his trial in Jerusalem. I didn't know the museum had the glass booth, and when I came across it on the top floor of the building, my blood ran cold. In this enclosure had stood the man who was responsible for the removal of one and a half million Jews from their communities, and their transportation to concentration camps via rail, death marches and other means. This was a man whose name conjured up evil itself, not only an orchestrator of untold suffering, but an enemy of all that is right and good. While the glass booth embodied the person who occupied it, it also represented the victory of justice: Eichmann was caught, tried, and executed by the Jewish people.

As I examined the materials accompanying the exhibit, I thought about stepping into the booth, however, my revulsion for Eichmann was so strong that I wasn't sure I wanted to occupy the same confined space that he had, even though more than four decades had passed since his trial. After overcoming my hesitation, I entered and sat in one of the jumpseats built for the guards who were always by his side during the proceedings; however, when I sat in the defendant's chair I experienced a feeling of contamination, a tangential contact with ultimate evil that haunted me for the remainder of the day. On a return trip to Israel a year ago, I revisited Beit Lohame Hagetaot, this time with my wife and sons; and while I made sure that they saw the glass booth, my encounter with it was brief, the disturbing memory of my previous experience welling up inside me.

A number of books have been published on Eichmann over the years, the most famous of which is Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem." Arendt's book is also the most controversial, and not without reason. I read a good deal of it about twenty years ago, however, I found much of it disturbing and never finished it. Arendt's lofty, detached tone along with her argument that Eichmann was merely an unthinking clerk rather than an unrepentant anti-Semite who dispatched millions to their deaths with excessive zeal were among the things that bothered me. Shortly afterward I read "Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police," a fascinating selection from the 275 hours of interviews conducted by Avner Less prior to the start of the trial. Here Eichmann revealed himself to be a master of both evasion and self deception, simultaneously self-pitying and snake-like, but also pathetically obsequious. He knew exactly what he was doing - there were none of Arendt's high-minded philosophical explanations about the "banality of evil," or her theories of a man, and practically an entire people who were guilty of "not thinking" or "understanding" what they were doing.

Given my relatively recent visit to Beit Lohame Hagetaot, I decided to read "The Eichmann Trial," especially as 2011 marks the fiftieth anniversary of this seminal event.

"The Eichmann Trial," at 203 pages, is relatively brief, but packs a tremendous punch. Author Deborah Lipstadt is uniquely qualified to write on this subject, given that she herself was embroiled in a long civil trial in 2000 when she was sued for libel by Holocaust denier David Irving. Lipstadt's extensive introduction to "The Eichmann Trial" elaborates on her own experience and while she links the present (Irving) to the past (Eichmann), if the truth be told, a few paragraphs would have sufficed in this regard. Once she leaves her own trial behind, she's completely on target. The story begins with the locating of Eichmann, who was living in Argentina in a cinderblock house with no electricity or running water, a far cry from the lifestyle he enjoyed as an SS colonel in the Third Reich. From this point on Lipstadt recounts the controversy surrounding Eichmann's abduction and the issue of Israel's right to try him, the reaction by much of the press (e.g., The Washington Post ran two editorials asserting that any trial in Israel would be "tainted with lawlessness") and so forth. No space is wasted as Lipstadt zeroes in on one relevant issue after another, highlighting central points in the testimony that have broad-reaching implications. Only a few quotations are necessary for the reader to see that Eichmann, who portrayed himself as merely a small cog in a very big wheel, and a soldier who was simply following orders, was in fact an outrageous liar. He had damned himself by dictating a memoir in Argentina several years before his capture, the transcripts of which came back to haunt him. Lipstadt writes that "In the newly released memoir, Eichmann expressed himself as an inveterate Nazi and anti-Semite. In contrast to the claims made by Hannah Arendt that he did not really understand the enterprise in which he was involved, the memoir reveals a man who considered the Nazi leaders to be his 'idols' and who was fully committed to their goals." In his own words, "I do a job if I can understand the need for it or the meaning of it, and if I enjoy doing it. [Then] time will just fly by, and that was how it was with the Jews."

Lipstadt, who is incredibly fair-minded in her comprehensive retelling of the trial and its various themes and personalities, devotes the last chapter of "The Eichmann Trial" to Hannah Arendt and her controversial "Eichmann in Jerusalem." There were many who were outraged by Arendt's theories, which almost seemed to exonerate Eichmann of personal culpability. There were also those on the other side of the fence, who thought she was brilliantly objective. Lipstadt points out that while there are merits to the arguments both pro and con, and she cites many specifics in Arendt's favor and not, the scale is ultimately tipped, and decisively so, against her. Eichmann's own memoir, writes Lipstadt, "reveals the degree to which Arendt was wrong about Eichmann. It is permeated with expressions of support for and full comprehension of Nazi ideology. He was no clerk. This was a well-read man who accepted and espoused the idea of racial purity." But that's just a preamble. Not only did Arendt get many of her facts wrong, Lipstadt writes, "[she] may also have been subliminally writing for her teacher and former lover, the revered philosopher Martin Heidegger, who joined the Nazi Party in 1933, ejected Jewish professors from the university where he served as rector, affirmed Nazi ideals, and never recanted his wartime actions.... In 1960, a few months before the trial, Arendt considered dedicating one of her books to Heidegger but decided not to, because it might upset others. In an unused dedication, she described him as 'my trusted friend to whom I have remained faithful and unfaithful.' She helped resurrect his postwar career by minimizing his Nazi affiliations and fighting to get him readmitted to the scholarly world. When 'Der Spiegel' exposed his wartime record she protested that people should 'leave him in peace.'" (Incredible as it may seem, Hannah Arendt was Jewish.) Lipstadt goes on to lambast Arendt, saying "She was guilty of precisely the same wrong that she derisively ascribed to Adolf Eichmann. She - the great political philosopher who claimed that careful thought and precise expression were of supreme value - did not 'think.'" While all of this may appear to be a sidebar, in fact it's quite the opposite. Lipstatdt isn't overstating it when she claims that Hannah Arendt's work, which mistakenly ignores the central role that historical anti-Semitism played in the scheme of the Holocaust, "has shaped contemporary perceptions of the Final Solution."

Let's hope that "The Eichmann Trial" undoes some of the damage caused by Arendt's flawed theories of fifty years ago.

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good history, way too self-referential April 13, 2011

By Paul

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This is a reasonably good and very accessible history of the Eichmann trial, and for that reason it's certainly worth reading. Lipstadt is far too "interpretive" in her telling of history, i.e. she spends too much time speculating how certain characters must have felt. She'd do better to stick closer to the data.

My biggest problem with the book is Lipstadt's repeated self-reference, linking the Eichmann trial to her own libel trial levied by the Holocaust denier David Irving. In fact the intro to the book presents her trial along with Nuremberg and the Eichmann trials as one of the three seminal legal events surrounding the Holocaust. (Ignoring, of course, the myriad tribunals in post-war Europe that were unconnected with Nuremberg all the way through the trials of John Demjanjuk).

The fact is that Lipstadt's trial is NOT a seminal part of Holocaust history. It's not that important in a historical sense. She is an excellent scholar and the world should be very relieved that a madman like Irving was not vindicated by this case. But in the end, her trial is an overplayed curiosity when one thinks about the magnitude and centrality of the legal events that were actually connected with the Holocaust.

It makes one lament the fact that there are essentially no books or publically accessible accounts of things like the Polish National Tribunal, the Treblinka trials, the Auschwitz trials, etc. All these things are of far greater historical interest than Irving vs. Lipstadt.