An exhibit that opened in Berlin this week examines the role Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Israel played in shaping modern understanding of the Holocaust and World War II, giving survivors an unprecedented chance to tell their stories on a public stage.
“Facing Justice — Adolf Eichmann on Trial,” showing at the Topography of Terror documentation center, draws heavily on the hundreds of hours of now-iconic film footage of Eichmann sitting calmly inside a bulletproof glass booth as he listened to the testimonies of those who survived his efforts to eradicate them.
Andreas Nachama, director of the Topography of Terror, called the trial a milestone in re-examining Germany’s World War II history, coming on the heels of the 1950s, when neither the victims nor the ex-Nazis spoke of the suffering they had borne or inflicted.
“The trial that took place in Israel broke this silence,” Nachama said.
Eichmann, a top deputy of Adolf Hitler, became known as the “architect of the Holocaust” for his role in coordinating the Nazi genocide policy. After the war, he escaped to Argentina. In May 1960, Israeli Mossad agents nabbed him there and brought him to trial in Jerusalem.
More information about that exhibit can be found at http://bit.ly/hRetXP. — ap