Yosef Kleinman became a surprise witness at the Eichmann trial, sharing a little-known piece of Holocaust history with captivated international listeners and making Kleinman a celebrity of sorts
ednesday June 7 1961 was another tense day for the citizens of the fledgling State of Israel. Israelis had been glued to the radio for the past two months riveted to the trial proceedings of Nazi arch-murderer Adolf Eichmann yemach shemo.
Eichmann the engineer and supervisor of Hitler’s “Final Solution” shared the primary responsibility for the systematic murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. After the war he went into hiding and then made his way to Argentina where he was captured by the Mossad in 1961 and hauled off to Israel to stand trial for genocide.
The trial which publicly rehashed the horrors that the Nazis had perpetrated against the Jews elicited a torrential emotional response in Israel and around the world. Until the trial survivors often met with a conciliatory humiliating and even scornful attitude blamed for going “like sheep to the slaughter.” Suddenly as the entire nation sat glued to the proceedings the survivors’ stories took on a new legitimacy — and a new deference.
Repressed memories burst forth into the standing-room-only courtroom. People screamed cried and tried to lunge at Eichmann who was ensconced during the proceedings in a bulletproof glass box.
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