As Adolf Eichmann’s cross-examination goes into its seventh consecutive day here tomorrow, before the three-man tribunal that has been judging his case since April 11, Israelis are awaiting eagerly the next phase in the proceedings–the summation of the prosecution and the defense by respectively, Attorney General Giedon Hausner and the Nazi’s chief counsel, Dr. Robert Servatius.
It is fully expected that Mr. Hausner’s summation will certainly take a full day. It is possible that Dr. Servatius, too, may make a very lengthy statement, claiming that he has proven that Eichmann, as “a small sausage” in the Nazi apparatus, was only a conscientious bureaucrat, carrying out superior orders without the power to alter the will of his superiors.
In any event, the case is coming to another climax–with the ultimate peak still ahead. That peak, of course, will he reached when the three judges–Presiding Justice Moshe Landau, and District Judge Binyamin Halevi and Yitzhak Raveh, deliver their decision. No one would venture a guess here today as to how long that may take, once the jurists have taken the case, with its millions of words of testimony, and other millions of words in documents, into their chambers for final deliberations.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.