Lecture on The Eichmann Trial for Stephen S. Wise Temple and Schools
The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960, and his subsequent trial in Tel Aviv by an Israeli court, electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, is recognized as a watershed moment in how the civilized world in general, and Holocaust survivors in particular, found the means to deal with the legacy of genocide that had never been seen before.
This “trial of the century” offers a legal, moral, and political framework for coming to terms with unfathomable evil and with those who perpetrate it. Dr. Lipstadt will share an overview of this gripping trial and will analyze the dramatic effect that the testimony had on a world that, until then, did not understand the millions who had died and the hundreds of thousands who managed to survive.