For David Ben Gurion the Eichmann trial had a crucial importance educating a generation of young Israelis and immigrants from the Middle East who fifteen years after the Holocaust had no direct exposure or experience with the Nazi crimes. Given a voice to the victims of the holocaust would establish a firm relation to the Jewish past and suffering and create a new Jewish man, an Israeli who would never again submit to oppression. Shaping a collective memory of past victimization as enabled par excellence by the Eichmann trial would serve as a backbone for fighting actual and perceived enemies and their actions. Yet David Ben-Gurion had an ambivalent perspective and also articulated that he would be more at ease if Eichmann would pass before his execution or if the trial could be held in a different country. The governing parties of Germany in the early 60’s had no interest in holding the trial there with the notable exception of Hessen’s state Attorney General Fritz Bauer who had identified Eichmann’s location for Israel and was adamant about prosecuting him in Germany as well as other Nazis criminals including Hans Globke who was working for Chancellor Adenauer.
Martin Buber, a group of intellectuals as well as some death camp survivors expressed their opposition to the trial and death sentence for Eichmann since the proceedings posed some fundamental moral questions and issues about the Jewish and Israeli identity. For Martin Buber traumatic memories reflected in the Eichmann trial were part of but not the core of the Jewish cultural and spiritual identity. As Jammot also shows there were other critical voices of Eichmann’s criminal trial. Most testimonies covered matters with which Eichmann was not directly connected. The procedures were taken over by the state and restricted by political considerations, monopolizing the quest for revenge. The defense was carried out by German lawyers who did not speak Hebrew nor had any clear understanding of the Israeli legal system . They could not present witnesses testifying for the defense and operated under limiting circumstances. Several observers also suggested by that killing Eichmann, though most accepted the guilty verdict, could not serve as a possible revenge for the murder of six million Jews and millions of others who perished under Nazi rule. For Buber and the few supporting him the essence of Judaism was defined by Jewish culture and spirituality and memories of the past as well as solidarity with all victims of oppression. . For him becoming part of the family of nations was essential for Israel but not its rise of a state that evolved into a prosecuting nation waging armed conflicts with actual and suspected adversaries. In that context he was opposed until the end of his life to the colonization of Palestinian lands and suggested as he had argued in preceding decades the creation of a confederation of two nations, the Jewish and a Palestinian one or a confederation that included other Arab countries. He was skeptical about the creation of an Israeli state guided by political Zionism because the Jewish humanism and spiritual immersion Martin Buber embraced conflicted with the pragmatic application of secular policies. His reservation about political Zionism paralleled his view of “organized religion which covered for the faithful the face of God” as he told me in Jerusalem in December 1961.
On May 29, 1962 a petition was delivered to President Yitzhak Ben-Zevi by Yehuda Bakon an Auschwitz survivor requesting that Eichmann’s death verdict be commuted, a statement signed by survivors and distinguished intellectuals like Hanna Arendt , Hugo Bergmann, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Yehuda Bakon and others. It raised issue like the status of Jewish values and of the Israeli state. The petition was denied though Martin Buber had an emergency meeting with David Ben-Gurion to discuss the petition. When Ben-Gurion presented it to his cabinet there was little sympathy for it with Golda Meir expressing strong opposition to any change of Eichmann’s verdict.
Florence Jammot’s documentary is a superbly balanced presentation of the divergent perspectives about the Eichmann trial and execution. What elucidates the context of the trial further are the efforts by the German government under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to influence the Eichmann trial through an agreement with Israel two months after the Eichmann trial started. Florence Jammot did not cover that aspect of the trial, possibly because it is very difficult and costly to access relevant official documents under Israel’s freedom of information law. German authorities agreed to provide Israel with 240 million deutschmarks for arms. In exchange Israel apparently consented to restrict the Holocaust trial to the case of Adolf Eichmann thus avoiding public identification and incrimination of high-ranking Nazis still working in the sixties for the German government and corporations. Adenauer had promised Ben-Gurion before Eichmann’ arrest this military assistance because of Israel’s economic strains and need for arms. But his office stonewalled the release of the funds until after the sentencing of Eichmann. On June 2, 1961 a meeting in Adenauer’s chancellery office was held organized by Adenauer’s Chief of Staff Hans Globke with high-ranking German and Israeli participants, the German Foreign intelligence service, BND, as well as its Israeli counterpart the Mossad. The agreement was finalized in a realpolitik fashion at the meeting though all participants knew that Globke had pursued his career as a committed high ranking Nazi until the very end of the Third Reich and joined afterwards in 1949 the German government becoming Adenauer’s secretary of state charged with running the German secret services like the BND and retired in 1963. He was the author of the infamous 1934 legal commentaries of the Nuremberg Race Laws used by judges to justify severe punishments including execution for violating the laws by committing Rassenschande [disgracing the race]. As reported in a 2011 investigation by the German SPIEGEL magazine, during the trial only information pertinent to Eichmann could be introduced and consultation by a German intelligence agent about the closing argument were held with the attorney general Gideon Hausner and the chief prosecutor Dr. Bach. The request by the defense to solicit testimony from Globke was denied by the court and Ben-Gurion vetoed inclusion in the trial of a 40 page commentary Eichmann had written in jail responding to a book about Globke.* Adenauer expressed to Ben-Gurion his appreciation for the superb execution of the trial and provided final authorization of the military aid in August 1962.
*Klaus Wiegrefe, DER SPIEGEL, April 15, 2011 The Holocaust in the Dock : West Germany’s Efforts to Influence the Eichmann Trial
Claus Mueller, filmexchange@gmail.com, New York
25.02.2021 | Claus Mueller's blog
Cat. : David Ben-Gurion Eichmann Trial Eichmann Trial Constraints Hans Globke Martin Buber FILM