“6,000,000 Accusers, Israel’s Case against Eichmann” – The opening speech by Attorney General Gideon Hausner in the Eichmann trial. An English translation of Gideon Hausner speech by Shabtai Rosen, published by Jerusalem Post in 1961. a dedicated and signed copy by Gideon Hausner: “to Jacob Oron with the blessing of a happy new year Gideon Hausner”.
“Six Million Accusers”, Gideon Hausner’s opening speech at the Eichmann trial, translated and edited by Shabtai Rosen. The prosecution’s speech, which Gideon Hausner gave for two whole days, was broadcast live on the radio. The historic speech provoked, among the hundreds of thousands of listeners, not only bitter personal memories, but also a renewed shock and deep sorrow. Hausner began his speech with the historical sentence that has been etched in the memory of the nation since the Eichmann trial until today: “When I stand before you here, Judges of Israel, to lead the Prosecution of Adolf Eichmann, I am not standing alone. With me are six million accusers. But they cannot rise to their feet and point an accusing finger towards him who sits in the dock and shout: “I accuse.” For their ashes are piled up on the hills of Auschwitz and the fields of Treblinka, and are strewn in the forests of Poland. Their graves are scattered throughout the length and breadth of Europe. Their blood cries out, but their voice is not heard. Therefore I will be their spokesman and in their name I will unfold the terrible indictment.”
Hausner excelled in defining Eichmann’s crimes and so were his words in describing the murderer Adolf Eichmann: “In this trial we will also meet a new kind of murderer, the one who performs the bloody work beyond his desk. He will rarely do the deed with his own hands. We know for sure of one case in which Adolf Eichmann beat a Jewish boy to death for daring to steal fruit from a peach tree in the yard of his home in Budapest. But in his words, he would operate gas chambers, a telephone call of his transports trains to the extermination centers, with his signature, sentences thousands, tens of thousands and millions…”
In his lengthy opening speech, Hausner described in detail the course of the extermination of European Jewry as a whole, citing countless documents and testimonies, numerical data, the names of German officers and officials, destroyed communities, and even poems written by the victims. The day after the speech, in the evening, despite the great sadness that pervaded everything, the masses of Israel took to the streets and squares, to celebrate the 13th independence day of the State of Israel.
The “Eichmann Trial” the trial of senior SS officer Adolf Eichmann, one of the direct architects of the “Final Solution” for the extermination of European Jewry, took place in Israel in 1961. The prosecutor, Gideon Hausner (1915-1990), who was then the Attorney General, was appointed as the lead plaintiff. The historic trial was, in fact, the first opportunity for the Jewish people to hold accountable the architect of the program designed to exterminate them. It was conducted in the presence of hundreds of journalists and partially broadcast on “Kol Yisrael, ” and for the first time publicly heard the testimony of hundreds of survivors who described the horrors of the threatening Holocaust years. At the end, Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed by hanging.
316 p. + [12] photo plates, 21 cm. Very good condition.
