7 e • WWWWWW 26 Friday, May 17, 1985 • r • THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS • , ,, Oti:Diepit•snavratvividieX.V.P.IZ . ? LOOKING BACK Six Million Continued from preceding page Advertising in The Jewish News Gets Results Place Your Ad Today. Call 3546060 NOW OPEC • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Altman Avedon Boulanger Bragg Bruni Cleworth Coopersmith Cota Davis Delacroix Dojc Edwards Erte Farber Fanch Friedman Gorman Haile Jenkins Kitchell Moross Neiman Noyer Pena Reinhard Schurr Secunda Steinberg Uzilevsky Weil Zoback and many others GALLERY AT SUGAR TREE 6223 Orchard Lake Rd., N. of Maple a yrzat 12facE 855-0813 fot ate 30% OFF FRAMED POSTERS DURING GRAND OPENING FEATURING A LARGE SELECTION BY TODAY'S LEADING ARTISTS Beautiful selection of original Lithographs, Serigraphs, Etchings, Paper Sculpture, Contemporary Oils and various mixed media . . . Framed and Un- framed Dyptych and Tryptch Art COMPLETE CUSTOM FRAMING 20% OFF 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." ❑