Eichmann Trial

Lipstadt's Study Of The Eichmann Trial

While reading Hannah Arendt's famous study, "Eichmann in Jerusalem", I realized the need to read an additional account of the trial in view of the controversy that still surrounds Arendt's work. Thus, I read this recent book by Deborah Lipstadt, "The Eichmann Trial" written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, April 11, 1961. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and the author of several studies of the Holocaust. Lipstadt is best-known for the unsuccessful libel suit brought against her by Holocaust-denier David Irving. In the course of that litigation, the Israeli government released to Lipstadt an autobiography that Eichmann had been writing in his cell in the course of his trial. Eichmann's manuscript had never before been released to the public, and it casts substantial light upon his trial defense and shows his strong personal commitment to Nazism and its anti-Semitic ideology. When Arendt wrote her book, she had seen only isolated portions of this autobiography.

The Irving libel case is important to this book in another way as well. Lipstadt spends considerable space in discussing the case and on the influence Irving and other Holocaust deniers had in bringing her to research and write her book on the Eichmann trial. Lipstadt's book was written to show how the Eichmann trial, with its focus on the enormity of the Holocaust and the witness and testimony of its victims, brought this catastrophe home to the public with an immediacy and a personal focus that it had not had earlier. Lipstadt's experience with Irving brought her back to the world of the Eichmann trial. Perhaps that explains the considerable space she expends on the matter.

Lipstadt offers a chronological account of the Eichmann trial that makes for substantially easier reading than Arendt's difficult style and is more clearly organized. Arendt's account opens with a chapter setting the stage for the trial and she returns frequently to various aspects of the proceeding, including the examination of witnesses. But much of the central portions of her book are written in a way which seems to focus on the history itself during the 1940s rather than upon how this history was recounted in the testimony of witnesses.

Lipstadt's history throughout focuses on anti-Semitism and views the Holocaust as the culmination on long centuries of anti-Semitism in Europe. She begins with a chapter on the Israeli governments 1960 capture and kidnapping of Eichmann from Argentina. Lipstadt is highly critical of Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, who claimed undue credit for finding Eichmann. More importantly, Wiesenthal invented a figure of 11,000,000 people killed in the camps, including 5,000,000 non-Jews. Lipstadt rejects this attempt to universalize the Holocaust and to take it away from its focus on Jews.

In subsequent chapters, Lipstadt examines the conduct of the trial, the many witnesses for the prosecution, and the cross-examination of Eichmann. Her focus is on the purpose of the trial and on what it was meant to achieve. The Israeli prosecutor, Attorney General Gideon Hausner, made the decision to develop his case by telling with passion the story of the entire Holocaust and its horrors. Thus he called as witnesses 100 Holocaust survivors who gave personal and unforgettable accounts of their experiences. Much of this oral testimony had little to do with Eichmann or with his role in the Holocaust. The three excellent Israeli jurists who heard the case frequently grew impatient with Hausner for what they called his "picture painting". They were interested in what Eichmann did and in whether he was guilty of the charges. They disapproved of Hausner expanding the proceeding from law to history. The written judgment of the trial court rejected much of Hausner's theory of his case. In general, Arendt's approach to the trial was similar to the Israeli judges. Arendt fully supported the verdict and the punishment of Eichmann but she objected vehemently to Hausner's expansion of the scope of a judicial proceeding.

In its discussion of the purpose and conduct of the trial, Lipstadt's book is squarely on the side of Hausner, even though she recognizes that he overstated his case in some instances. For Lipstadt, the Eichmann trial and the testimony of the survivors brought the Holocaust home with an immediacy and force that it had not had earlier. In her extended summary of the impact of the Eichmann trial, Lipstadt writes: "In short, as a result of the trial, the story of the Holocaust, though it had previously been told, discussed, and commemorated, was heard anew, in a profoundly different way, and not just in Israel but in many parts of the Jewish and non-Jewish world. The telling may not have been entirely new, but the hearing was. ... Despite the many references to the Holocaust in Israel, America, and elsewhere, the story did not penetrate into their reality the way it did beginning with the Eichmann trial. The new hearing of the history of the Final Solution would shape our contemporary understanding of this watershed event in human history." (pp. 194-95)

After giving her account of the trial, the witnesses, and the testimony, Lipstadt offers a lengthy chapter devoted to Arendt's book. She observes that "[t]o many people Arendt was a more central character in the Eichmann story than Eichmann himself.... Her book and the controversy it aroused put this trial on the intellectual map. Her perspectives on both perpetrators and victims continue to constitute the prism through which many people's view of the Holocaust is refracted." (p. 149)

Lipstadt recognizes the complexity of Arendt's account and offers a nuanced if ultimately unsympathetic account of her book. She makes many points, large and small, with I think varying degrees of merit. The major points of her critique are first, as discussed above, that Hausner's approach to the trial was correct, in contrast to Arendt's claim that it strayed far from the judicial process. Second, Lipstadt takes issue with Arendt's view of the nature of the Holocaust and its crimes. Arendt saw the Holocaust as a "crime against humanity" arising from but also separate from the anti-Semitism that had plagued Europe. Lipstadt views the Holocaust as the ultimate result of anti-Semitism and as profoundly and immediately directed against the Jewish people. Lipstadt claims that Arendt ignored or minimized the scope of pervasive European anti-Semitism. To simplify, but not unfairly, Arendt sees the Holocaust as a universal crime directed at the Jewish people while Lipstadt sees the Holocaust as a particular crime against the Jewish people with universal implications.

Both Arendt's book and Lipstadt's book have much to teach as history rarely permits of a single indisputably correct interpretation. I suggest that the two books are more consistent than either author might allow. Their approaches are complementary rather than conflicting. Arendt and the Israeli court were correct about the importance of the rule of law and of the judicial process. Lipstadt and Hauser were correct about the importance of remembrance under unique circumstances. Arendt properly emphasized the universal character of the Holocaust while Lipstadt also properly recognized its pervasively anti-Semitic nature. Arendt offers philosophical depth marred by some dogmatism and by an imperious tone. Lipstadt offers a corrective but not a full replacement. We need both books.

Robin Friedman