Israel Court Rules in Favor of Televising Eichmann’s Trial

Plans to televise the proceedings of the forthcoming trial of Adolf Eichmann were authorized today by the three-man tribunal who will try the Nazi war criminal next month. Defense counsel Robert Servatius had objected to the filming of the trial on the grounds that it would interfere with the proceedings.

In a decision handed down by the president of the tribunal, Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, the court ruled that “televising the court’s deliberations not only is not unfitting but may well serve important values connected with the performance of justice.” In over ruling the objection by the defense counsel, the judges held that, when there is wide public interest in a case, the publicity should be of a commensurate nature.

The decision followed a visit to the site by the three judges, Justice Landau and District Court Judges Binyamin Halevi and Yitzhak Raveh. The court’s ruling concerned only the principle of televising the proceedings, but did not concern the question of whether exclusive kinescope rights could be given to Capital Cities Broadcasting Company, an American firm.

David Landor, director of the Government’s Press Information Office, said today that the Capital Cities firm was given exclusive rights to the filming in order to ensure the widest possible distribution of the proceedings of the trial, in view of its great moral and educational importance. He said the American firm would make the entire film and tape available in full, without censoring or cutting the material. The concessionaires, he said, were doing this as a public service and would contribute all profits to a charity designated by the Israel Government.

It was learned that at the request of Latin American broadcasting firms, the trial proceedings would be made available daily in Spanish and Portuguese translations, in addition to the official English, French and German translations from the Hebrew. The daily proceedings will be fully recorded “from gavel” to gavel” by camouflaged and noiseless equipment which was demonstrated to the press today.