Who was Adolf Eichmann?
Understanding the role played by administrators and bureaucrats in the Holocaust.
The clip opens with a reporter describing the arrival into a Jerusalem courtroom of Adolf Eichmann for the βTrial of the Centuryβ β a man in a bullet proof glass box. This opening scene was the start of a trial that was filmed for four months and each day a summary of the trial was flown to 37 countries, becoming the first global TV documentary series. Cameraman Alan Rosenthal, 21 at the time, discusses his memories of Eichmann as a tall, emotionless, twitchy man with a high-pitch in his voice and very difficult to read. He suggests that this is the lasting impression of Eichmann, a committed member of the Nazi party from the early 1930s and became responsible for the Jewish Department of the SS, is deeply confusing and perplexing. Gabriel Bach, deputy prosecutor at the trial, explains that Eichmann was on trial for his role in the shipment of 6 million Jews, 1.5 million of whom were children, to their deaths and how the policy of forced emigration changed to the final solution and mass murder; that he was βcharged with causing the mass deportation of Jews to death camps and their murder.β Bach also explains how Rudolf Hoess, commandant at Auschwitz, had explained that it was essential to kill the children first in order to remove the possibility of avengers. Yehuda Bakon reminds us that it is vitally important that we tell the story in every generation of what happened during the war years and in the camps.
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