This is the first of a series of articles. Read the second half. Every morning, the words "Beth Hamishpath" ("The House of Justice"), shouted by the court docket usher at the top of his voice, make us leap to our feet as they announce the arrival of the three judges, who, naked-headed and in black robes, stroll into the courtroom from a aspect entrance to take their seats on the best tier of the raised platform at the entrance of the long corridor. They sit at an extended table, which is ultimately to be lined with innumerable books and greater than fifteen hundred paperwork. Immediately beneath the judges are the translators, whose services are wanted for direct exchanges between the defendant or his counsel and the court; in any other case, Adolf Eichmann, the German-talking accused social gathering, like all the opposite foreigners within the courtroom, follows the Hebrew proceedings by means of the simultaneous radio transmission, which is great in French, bearable in English, and sheer comedy-continuously incomprehensible-in German.
In view of the scrupulous fairness of all of the technical arrangements for the trial, it is among the minor mysteries of the brand new State of Israel that, with its high share of German-born individuals, it was unable to find an enough translator into the one language the accused and his counsel may perceive. One tier below the translators are the glass booth of the accused and the witness field, NFT facing one another. Finally, on the underside tier, with their backs to the spectators, are the prosecutor, Attorney General Gideon Hausner, along with his staff of four assistant attorneys, and Dr. Robert Servatius, counsel for the protection-a lawyer from Cologne, chosen by Eichmann and paid by the Israeli government (just as at the Nuremberg Trials all attorneys for the accused had been paid by the tribunal of the victorious powers), NFT who during the primary weeks is accompanied by an assistant. Whoever deliberate this auditorium in the newly constructed House of the People, Beth Ha’am-now guarded from roof to cellar by closely armed police, and surrounded by excessive fences, in addition to by a wooden row of barracks within the entrance courtyard, through which all comers are expertly frisked-clearly had a theatre in thoughts, full with orchestra and balcony, with proscenium and stage, and with aspect doorways for the actors’ entrances.
At no time, nevertheless, is there anything theatrical in the conduct of the judges-Moshe Landau, the presiding choose, Judge Benjamin Halevi, and Judge Yitzhak Raveh. Their stroll is unstudied; their sober and intense consideration, visibly stiffening under the influence of grief as they take heed to the tales of suffering, is pure; their impatience with the prosecutor’s attempt to drag out the hearings is spontaneous and refreshing; their attitude toward the defense is maybe a shade over-polite, as though they'd it all the time in thoughts that, to quote the judgment they handed down, "Dr. Servatius stood almost alone in this strenuous legal battle, in an unfamiliar surroundings;" their manner towards the accused is all the time beyond reproach. They're so evidently three good and trustworthy men that one just isn't stunned to see that none of them yields to the greatest of all the temptations to play-act in this setting-that of pretending that they, all three born and educated in Germany, must look forward to the Hebrew translation of anything said in German.
Judge Landau hardly ever waits to offer his reply until the translator has done his work, AI Art and he steadily interrupts the translation to right and enhance it, showing grateful for this bit of distraction from the grim business at hand. In time, in the course of the cross-examination of the accused, he even leads his colleagues to use their German mom tongue within the dialogue with Eichmann-a proof, if proof were nonetheless needed, of his remarkable independence of present public opinion in Israel. There may be no doubt from the very starting that it's Judge Landau who sets the tone, and that he is doing his greatest-his best-to prevent this trial from changing into a "show" trial underneath the path of the prosecutor, whose love of showmanship is unmistakable. Among the explanations he can't all the time succeed is the simple proven fact that the proceedings happen on a stage earlier than an audience, with the usher’s marvellous shout at the beginning of each session producing the impact of a rising curtain.
Clearly, this courtroom is nicely suited to the show trial that David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, had in mind when he decided to have Eichmann kidnapped in Argentina and delivered to the District Court of Jerusalem to reply the charge that he had performed a principal role in "the Final Solution of the Jewish question," because the Nazis called their plan to exterminate the Jews. And Ben-Gurion, who has rightly been given the title of "architect of the state," is the invisible stage manager of the proceedings. He doesn't attend a single one of many sessions; within the courtroom, he speaks with the voice of his Attorney General, who, representing the government, does his best-his highest-to obey his grasp. And if his finest typically turns out to not be good enough, the reason is that the trial is presided over by somebody who serves Justice as faithfully as Mr. Hausner serves the State of Israel. Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended, and judged, and that all the other questions, although they might appear to be of greater import-of "How may it occur?
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