Community Is Invited
to Detroit's Tribute
Demonstration to
Israel
at 13:
Its Historic
Role
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THE JE
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Vatician Organ
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Page 4
Israers 1 10, -Anniversary
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(Story, Page 9)
4 /Einstein
On Peace"
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Great Literary
Classic
Commentary
1N/1 I
A Weekly Review
Page 2
1--I I G.A. r.--4
Jewish Events
Michigan's Only English-Jewish Newspaper—Incorporatilig The Detroit Jewish Chronicle
Vol. XXXIX No. 8
Printed in a
100,T
, , Union Shop
Related
Eichmann Stories
Pages 7, 8, 16,
17 and 32
1 /100 W. 7 Mile Rd.—VE 8-9364—Detroit 35, April 21, 1961—$5.00 per Year; Single
,
11
Copy 15c
Eichmann Puts
Blame on Hitler
Court Accepts Nazi's Story Over Recorder;
Says He Is Ready to Atone, Face Death
By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
'(Direct Telex Service from Jerusalem Courthouse to The Jewish News)
JERUSALEM—Adolf Eichmann was-quoted by one of his captors in court
Wednesday, before the trial recessed until today while Israel celebrated her
Independence Day, as saying that the order to exterminate Jews came directly
from Hitler.
It was the prosecution's second witness, Captain Avner Less who interro-
gated Eichmann in his cell last June, who testified. to the defendant's remarks.
Attorney General Gideon Hausner, however ; declared that the prosecution
will prove Eichmann "extremely more cruel than Hitler."
A dramatic review of Eichmann's testimony in his prison cell before the,
start of the trial last week, presented by interrogator Less and in Eichmann's
own voice via tape recorder, was admitted as evidence.
Eichmann said that Reinhard Heydrich transmitted to him Hitler's orders
to proceed with the extermination. He pleaded that he cannot now even look at
an open wound.
• "I did not want to look at heinous acts," said Eichmann.
He told his questioners that he told his superior, Captain Heinrich Muel-
ler, "It is an indescribable inferno." Eichmann claimed that Heydrich prevented
him from making a written report expressing his disgust.
More astounding was Eichmann's, declaration that he was ready to tell
everything because he did not expect mercy after being told he "would not live
beyond my 56th year." He is 54 now. •
The testimony sounded as if the accused sitting in the bulletproof glass
box was -a humanitarian acting in behalf of murderers, rather than a murderer who
masterminded the crime of the holocaust.
The testimony was an amazing turn in the trial, the monster posing as
a human being. It was evident Tuesday and Wednesday that Eichmann_ had
begun to tremble, that he was no longer the calm . and unaffected defendant.
His mouth twitches and his fingers shake.
His testimony for the first time showed an 'attempted front at humaneness,
since the Nazi crime was unfolded again in all its horror with him branded as the
chief architect.
-
We Salute
Israel's 13th
Aimiversary
* * *
* * *
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire to The Jewish News)
JERUSALEM—Fifteen years after the fall of Hitler's Third Reich brought
an end to Adolf EiChmann's efforts to kill every Jew in . Europe, the former
Gestapo colonel declared to a tape recorder in an Israel prison that "I am pre-
(Continued on Page 16)
Attorney General's Opening Statement Is History
Charges Detailed; World Weeps Anew at Tragedy
(Direct Telex Service from Jerusalem Courthouse to The Jewish News)
- By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
JERUSALEM — Mingled feelings of anguish and nausea were
aroused by the longest (nine hours and 35 minutes) opening state-
ment in legal history given by Israel Attorney General Gideon
Hausner in the second week of the trial of Adolf Eichmann.
Scenes too terrible for even the hardest of men to bear were
described by the chief prosecutor. He told of the cannibalism prac-
ticed by the Nazis under Eichmann's direction as an expedient ,
solution to a logistics problem when Jews in hundreds of thousands
were marched to their deaths.
Hausner's description of the plight of children was especially
so terrifying that even the most toughened correspondents wiped
their eyes upon hearing of the mass tragedy.
The Attorney General told how the children, miserable and
disciplined by terror to comply with instructions, were led to
their deaths like a flock of sheep.
Hausner quoted official records of testimony from Eichmann's
henchmen to show that Jews by tens of thousands were slaughtered
wherever Nazis were in power.
Concluding his charge with the declaration that the judges of
Israel will pronounce true and righteous judgi ► ,- '
General said:
"Adolf Eichmann will enjoy a privilege which he did not
-
accord even a single one of his victims. He will be able to defend
himself before the court. His fate will be decided according to law
and according to the evidence, with the burden of proof resting
upon the prosecution." ;.,a, 0
There is some .resentment here • at Hausner's general tone
and approach. Even some of the German correspondents say that
the prosecutor makes "too much the gentleman of Eichmann,"
that the prosecution is "too correct" and "too legalistic and
Anglo-Saxon and does not deal harshly enough - with the beast."
Many of the survivors of the holocaust have declared that
Eichmann is being treated too humanly and that "this is no time
to be overly -apologetic in linking the criminal to his crimes."
But there are also many defenders of Hausner's approach.
They assert that in all instances of exposing degradations, the
prosecutor has. shown Eichmann to be directly responsible.
Forty-two volumes of the Nuremberg records were intro-
duced as background evidence. The - horrible. tales they contain
were recounted. by Hausner in his 50,000-word charge to be re-
corded as an historical account of the holocaust which is really
on trial here. Out of the seemingly endless incidents of torture
and extermination, the Attorney General alluded to one in
particular.
"True, we have certain knowledge of only one incident in
which Eichmann .actually beat to death a Jewish boy who dared
steal fruit from a peach tree in his Budapest home," said Hausner.
"But it was his word that put gas chambers into action. He lifted
the telephone and railroad- ears left for extermination centers; it
signature that sealed the doom of tens of thousands."
Hausner reviewed the record of Eichmann's crimes in all the
countries affected by the Nazi holocaust. The "final solution"
expert was thwarted in his extermination schemes only in Denmark,
the prosecutor- said, where nearly all of 8,000 Jews- were helped by
(Continued on Page 32)
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