The Adolf Eichmann trial, begun April 11, enters tomorrow what is expected to be the last week of the prosecution’s presentation of its case against the ex-Gestapo colonel, charged with directing the annihilation of 6, 000, 000 European Jews under the Nazi regime.
So far, 63 sessions have been held by the court, 83 witnesses have testified, and nearly 1, 300 documents have been entered as evidence–all presented by the prosecution. Dr. Robert Servatius, chief of Eichmann’s counsel, has stated repeatedly that the accused himself will take the witness stand after the prosecution’s detailing of its case has been completed.
Attorney General Gideon Hausner, heading the prosecution, is expected to begin showing tomorrow a series of films captured by Allied armies, bringing out details about some of the Nazi activities at Auschwitz and other death factories. Dr. Servatius and Eichmann himself have already been shown these motion picture documentaries, put on film by the Nazis.
Another line of documentary evidence likely to be developed by the prosecution this week may show what Soviet authorities did, or failed to do, in connection with the “trucks for lives” deal proposed by Eichmann to leaders of Hungarian Jewry. Testimony, thus far, has shown that some British officials had frustrated some efforts to pay the Nazis winterized trucks for permission to let a million Jews escape death. One member of the three-judge tribunal, Justice Binyamin Halevi, has asked the prosecution to re-examine the records of that proposed deal, to show how the Russians reacted to that proposal.
As the prosecution came near the end of its case, Israelis this weekend showed considerable interest in some of the documents presented by Mr. Hausner last week, showing the role played during the Nazi regime by the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
The Mufti documents, captured by the Allies in Austria in 1945, show that the wartime religious leader of the Moslems had urged Hitler’s Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribben trop, to do all he could to frustrate Allied negotiations with Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary, whom the Allies wanted to permit Jews to emigrate. The Grand Mufti was shown also to have written to the Rumanian and Bulgarian governments, urging them to forbid Jewish emigration to Palestine and to send them instead “under strong, energetic guard” to Nazi campsite Poland.
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