Slashing at every contention entered on appeal by the defense counsel for Adolf Eichmann, Attorney General Gideon Hausner today requested Israel’s five-man Supreme Court panel–before which Eichmann is trying to save himself from hanging–to reject all the defense claims and uphold the judgment of guilty handed down last December by the District Court here.
Pounding successfully at every point raised in the appeal by Dr. Robernt Servatius, of Cologne, chief of Eichmann’s counsel, Mr. Hausner upheld Israel’s right to try the former Gestapo colonel convicted of directing the slaughter of 6,000,000 European Jews. He maintained that Eichmann had virtually convicted himself during the 1,000,000-word interrogation conducted by the Israeli police prior to last year’s trial.
The Attorney General tore apart the defense insistence on Eichmann’s having been a “mere transport officer” in Hitler’s Gestapo. He ripped into the defense claims that Eichmann’s “low rank” had been indicated in his “modest manner of living.”
Concerning Israel’s jurisdiction, Mr. Hausner told the high tribunal, the fact is that, under international law, a court need not be concerned with the manner in which the prisoner had been brought before the court if his offense is against the law. Thus the Attorney General replied to Dr. Servatius’ contention that Eichmann was not subject to an Israeli court because he had been abducted in Argentina. Even if those who abducted the man are liable to arrest, trial or damage suits, Mr. Hausner said, the validity of the prosecution’s case is not affected.
The defense had claimed that Eichmann could not possibly have remembered fully all details of events that had transpired 20 years earlier. Mr. Hausner pointed out that the 1,000,000-word police interrogation transcript had been preceded by Eichmann’s recital of many major facts to a Nazi friend, Willem Stassen, when he was still in Argentina. Thus, said Mr. Hausner, Eichmann had undergone, during the months he dictated his story to Stassen, “a full-dress rehearsal” that refreshed his memory several years before he told many of the same facts to the Israeli police questioning him.
STRESSES INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS DESCRIPTION OF EICHMANN
Hitting hard at the “transport officer” claim by Eichmann, the Attorney General showed that the former Gestapo colonel was the Gestapo’s “referant,” or principal expert on the Jewish question. All matters affecting Jews were referred to Eichmann, Mr. Hausner recalled. The International Red Cross, Mr. Hausner pointed out, had described Eichmann as the “key man on all matters pertaining to Nazi dealings with Jews.”
Mr. Hausner recalled Eichmann’s over-ruling of other officials when he had Jews sent to concentration camps. “He was not a mere transport officer of or keeper of the time tables, ” said Mr. Hausner. “He was obsessed with the task of exterminating the Jews. Eichmann did not give the direct orders for throwing cyclon gas into each gas chamber where naked men, women and children stood with the fear of death in their eyes. But everybody knew that as the “referant, ‘ he was not dealing with education, culture or social welfare. He dealt in death.”
The Servatius argument about Eichmann’s “modest” life was attacked by Mr. Hausner, who showed that the Nazi’s quiet manner of family living applied only to the period he was hiding in Argentina. “During the height of his splendor, ” the Attorney General noted, citing testimony previously entered in the trial, “Eichmann lived in a private villa, commanded three automobiles and two chauffeurs, had at least two known mistresses.”
As Mr. Hausner continued slashing at the arguments presented to the Supreme Court panel last week by Dr. Servatius, the prisoner sat calmly in his glass-enclosed, bulletproof dock, taking voluminous notes, every once in a while sending a hastily scribbled note to his counsel.
Mr. Hausner, who had begun his rebuttal Friday, did not quite complete his responses to Dr. Servatius at today’s session. He is expected to finish tomorrow–after which, under the court’s rules, Dr. Servatius will have an opportunity to make a closing statement. Then the appeal will be in the hands of the country’s highest court, which is not expected to rule on it for at least a month.
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