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Arendt in Jerusalem, Jackson at Nuremberg: Presuppositions of the Nazi War Crimes Trials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

James Friedman
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Extract

In 1961 the government of Israel brought criminal charges in Jerusalem against Adolf Eichmann, a former Obersturmbannfuher (Lt. Col.) in the S.S. Eichmann's name had frequently come up at the Nuremberg trials, as he had overseen the substantial task of transporting European Jews to Nazi concentration and death camps during the war. However, he was never tried at Nuremberg because he had evaded capture by allied armies and begun a new life in Argentina. In 1961 the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, kidnapped Eichmann and brought him to Israel to stand trial. Given Eichmann's notoriety, and the rather unusual way in which Israel obtained in personam jurisdiction over him, it was not surprising that the trial received world-wide attention.

In Jerusalem Eichmann was charged with violations of the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950.

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Articles
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1994 , pp. 601 - 625
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1994

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References

1 Attorney General of Israel v. Adolf Eichmann (1962) 16(iii) P.D. 2033; 56 Am. J. Int'l L. 805.

2 4 L.S.I. 141.

3 An English translation of the indictment appears in Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem (Penguin Books, New York) 21, 244–45Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., at 244-45.

5 Ibid.

6 Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg), The Nuremberg Case, as presented by Jackson, Robert H., (Cooper Square Publishers, New York, 1971) 19–29Google Scholar.

7 See Taylor, Telford, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)Google Scholar. Professor Taylor, Chief Allied Prosecutor at Nuremberg after Justice Jackson returned to the United States, makes clear the difficulties allied prosecutors had in assimilating and organizing an enormous number of captured German documents in the relatively short time prior to trial. There was too much written and photographic evidence rather than too little.

8 Eichmann in Jerusalem, supra n. 3, at 251.

9 Ibid., at 251-52.

10 Ibid., at 48.

11 Ibid., at 53.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., at 49.

14 Ibid., at 50-51.

15 Ibid.

16 See “Hannah Arendt on Hannah Arendt”, in Hill, Melvyn A., ed., Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1979)Google Scholar.

17 See Letter to Scholem, Gerhard, in Arendt, Hannah, Feldman, Ron H., ed., The Jew as Pariah (Grove Press, New York, 1978) 245–51Google Scholar.

18 Eichmann in Jerusalem, supra n. 3, at 287-88.

19 Ibid., at 289-90.

20 Ibid., at 297.

21 Ibid., at 278.

22 Ibid., at 279.

23 Ibid., at 257.

24 Ibid., at 287.

25 Kimball, Warren F., ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1984) Vol. 3, pp. 329–30Google Scholar.

26 “The Natural Law”, in Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Collected Legal Papers (Harcourt Brace, New York, 1920) 312Google Scholar.

27 Article 6(a), Charter of the International Military Tribunal, reprinted in Roberts, Adam and Guelff, Richard, eds., Documents on the Laws of War, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1982) 155Google Scholar.

28 Article 6(b), Charter of the International Military Tribunal, ibid.

29 Beyond the military codes of the various armies, there were international agreements concerning warfare. See The Hague Conventions of 1907, reprinted in Documents on the Laws of War, supra n. 27.

30 Article 6(c), Charter of the International Military Tribunal, supra n. 27.

31 See John, and Tusa, Ann, The Nuremberg Trial (Atheneum, New York, 1984)Google Scholar Chapter 2 for a discussion of allied politics in the formation of the Charter and the Tribunal.

32 “Closing Address”, in The Nuremberg Case, supra n. 6, at 122-23.

33 Ibid., at 122.

34 Arendt, Hannah, “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship”, in The Listener, August 6, 1964, pp. 187, 205Google Scholar.

35 Weapons of the Spirit, A film by Sauvage, Pierre, (Friends of Le Chambon, 8033 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, California)Google Scholar.

36 Sauvage's interview with Bill Moyers is included in the documentary. All quotations from Sauvage are taken from this interview.

37 Eichmann in Jerusalem, supra n. 3, at 295.