The Eichmann Trial [On the Holocaust]

On April 10, 1961, at 8:55 a.m. Adolf Eichmann, who during the Holocaust period had orchestrated the deportations of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps, was seated in a glass booth in the Beit Ha'am hall in Jerusalem. The hall was packed full. People in Israel and around the world clung to the radios and listened intently to the one hundred and ten witnesses who came up one after the other and told, in the first person singular, of the horrors of the Holocaust. It was the first time the stories of the survivors took center stage and the first time the public in Israel truly stopped and listened. As a result of the trial, a different discourse developed on the fate of the Jews in the Holocaust and the place of the survivors in Israeli society.This episode will delve into this watershed event, by focusing on the testimonies of Moshe Bejsky, a survivor of the Plaszow camp, and Rivka Yoselevska, who alone survived the shooting pits, alongside the reactions and impressions of Israeli reporters and intellectuals who witnessed the trial.