The American Jewish Committee today issued a comprehensive analysis of the forthcoming Eichmann case, with particular emphasis on the moral questions, and legal arguments.
Warning that moral questions of the Eichmann trial are “in danger of being beclouded or even brushed aside,” the Committee urged public opinion leaders to restore proper emphasis “to those issues of conscience which have the highest claim on the attention of Americans and indeed of all mankind.” The Eichmann case, the Committee stressed, “should make us confront” the meaning of hatred, genocide and totalitarianism in the modern world.
The Committee pointed to the fact that “Allied leaders solemnly promised to seek out and punish those guilty of genocide no matter how long or difficult the task, ” Nevertheless, Eichmann remained at large 15 years until captured by Israel. In any event, the analysis emphasized, “no country or group of countries has asked to try Eichmann. ” Furthermore, “there is no international body for trying war criminals, and in the light of the cold war, it is hardly conceivable that one could be formed.”
The analysis recalled that Israel’s apology for violating Argentine sovereignty was accepted, and cited a similar case in which an American fugitive in Peru was seized by a U.S. officer and brought home without extradition proceedings.
On Israel’s jurisdiction, the analysis cited a report by the United Nations War Crimes Commission which asserted that “the right to punish war crimes is not confined to the state whose nationals had suffered, or on whose territory the offense took place, but is possessed by any independent state whatsoever, just as is the right to punish the offense of piracy.”
“The trial will recall horrors that many of us–Christians and Jews-would rather forget, “the Committee stated. It added that “neither religion nor humanism can approve forgetfulness or evasion of the truth, in the eyes of religion, we can repent and reform only if we remember and accept the truth. In the eyes of humanism, consciousness and knowledge must supplant unawareness and ignorance. “
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