April 11th
1961 - Israel began the trial of Adolf Eichmann, accused of World War II war
crimes.
I could claim to
remember it well, because the whole country (then a very young one thirteen
years old) listened to nothing else every weekday on the Voice of Israel, the national
radio channel.
But I was even
younger, and although the child of a Holocaust survivor who always knew something
terrible had left my father without a single birth family member, I knew little
of the details and don’t recall hearing the revelations of the trial.
To this day,
Adolph Eichmann is the only person ever executed in the state of Israel. The
death penalty is still legal there, but only for Crimes Against Humanity. The
state used the gallows left from British Mandate years (1918-1948) and had
to have a mock-execution to make sure the hanging apparatus still functioned.
One of my first memories
was related to this. I was standing by the yard of our apartment building when
two girls (they seemed like young women to little me then, but they were likely
highschoolers) were discussing whether Eichmann should be put to death. I didn’t
absorb the details of their positions, only that they differed on the matter.
I was too young
to know any of the details of survivors’ testimony, or Eichmann’s retort that
he was “just following orders.” Oddly, my only memory was of a civil and cogent
discussion between two young people about the rightness or wrongness of the death
penalty.
It’s a good memory,
which serves me to this day. It’s the only way to address matters of importance—
soberly, respectfully, and with a sense that another person who understands
things differently is also trying their best, and that we might be wrong.
