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26 Friday, May 17, 1985
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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LOOKING BACK
Six Million
Continued from preceding page
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Mery and Sheila Aronoff, proprietors
story for one-and-a-half hours.
Her evidence shattered the
courtroom.
"For me, the fate of this sim-
ple woman symbolizes the fate
of the Jewish nation. We were
thrown into the mass grave of
mankind, but with powers we
cannot understand we sur-
vived. Like Rifka Yoselewska,
we came to Israel, we had new
life, new hope."
Hausner speaks of Eich-
mann and the trial with a vivid
clarity. For Gideon Hausner,
who came to Israel from his
native Poland at the age of 13
and who lost members of his
own family in the Holocaust,
remains as fascinated by Eich-
mann today as he was 25 years
ago.
And they have been busy
years. He is a former Knesset
member, cabinet minister, lec-
turer at the Hebrew Univer-
sity of Jerusalem, president of
the International Association
of Trial Lawyers, and chairman
of Yad Vashem, Israel's prin-
cipal Holocaust memorial
authority. All the while he has
maintained an active and suc-
cessful law office.
Yet, ironically, it was his
encounter with Eichmann 25
years ago that has dominated
his life, and he still carries
Eichmann around like an alba-
tross. "Yes, it is so," he con-
cedes. "Wherever I travel and
am introduced to people, there
is an immediate flicker of re-
cognition. I am the man who
prosecuted Eichmann."
But Hausner does not feel it
is necessary to "lay the ghost,"
even if he could do so. The les-
sons of the trial are fading, not
only for those who would deny
the Holocaust but also for a
generation which has grown
up not knowing about it.
Ben-Gurion, he says, had a
number of objectives in mind
when he decided to put Eich-
mann on trial. "The first, of
course, was to have a fair trial,
obtain a just verdict and an
adequate punishment. He also
had a keen sense of history and
wanted a complete record of
the Final Solution, taken
under oath in open court and
tested by cross-examination.
"And, as a byproduct of this,
he wanted to give young Is-
raelis, who had grown up in an
atmosphere of independence
and for whom the Holocaust
was incomprehensible, a true
picture of what happened.
"He was right. Our young-
sters simply couldn't fathom
the murder of six million Jews:
There was some estrangement
between young Israelis and
the departed part of the nation
— and those who survived
were looked on as if they were
more cowardly than we.
"During the trial, I made a
conscious effort to bring out
stories of youngsters; of how
they were caught up, enmeshed,
in the Nazi apparatus, stripped
of their rights, tortured,
starved, loaded like cattle on
trains and taken to abattoirs.
"It was important for our
Israeli youth to know how it
happened, and to make them
wonder if they would have be-
haved differently had they
been there."
The trial also served anoth-
er important function. "It had
a cathartic effect," says Haus-
ner. "After the trial I received
thousands of letters from peo-
ple who had been through the
horror but couldn't talk about
their experiences. They found
that the trial made the whole
thing easier for them."
Almost two years after that
first dramatic announcement by
Ben-Gurion in the Knesset, Gi-
deon Hausner rose to deliver his
final address to the court and to
"Roosevelt . . . was
idolized by the
Jews of America.
He owed them so
much, yet he gave
so little in return."
ask that the death penalty be
imposed. "Even if he were killed
a thousand times," Hausner told
the court, "even if he died anew
each day, even then there would
be no atonement for the suffer-
ing he caused to a single child."
The judges agreed, and on
May 31, 1962, Adolf Eichmann
was executed.
Hausner has just one regret
about the trial. "Fresh evidence
has 'since been uncovered that
adds to the jigsaw of evidence,
yet nothing to alter the outcome.
Today, I would be much sharper
against the West. At the time of
the trial, we thought that Chur-
chill and Roosevelt were
ignorant of the fate of the Jews.
We now know that they simply
wrote Jewry off.
"How incredible that they
stood by in the face of their
knowledge of the Final Solution.
Particularly Roosevelt, who was
idealized by Jews of America.
He owed them so much, yet he
gave so little in return.
"But the verdict against Eich-
mann was just. It is the only
time we have used the death
penalty, but it was right to hang
Eichmann. He put himself be-
yond the pale of mankind. He
devoted himself to mass murder,
doing all he
could to exterminate a nation.
"Decent people and Eich-
mann could not breath the
same air or tread the same
earth. That is why we had to
impose the death penalty. It
was not an act of retribution.
Nor did it settle any reckoning
with Nazi Germany. But once
Eichmann was found guilty on
all points of the indictment, the
judgment was inevitable." ❑