The Government Prosecutor’s Office is likely to send a member of its staff to Israel to attend the Israeli police officials’ interrogation of Adolf Eichmann, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was informed today.
If permitted to do so by the Israeli authorities, the Federal Attorney said, the German representative will himself participate in Eichmann’s interrogation.
Specifically, the Federal Attorney stated, he is hopeful that, through the interrogation of Eichmann, he might obtain testimony bearing on the case of Wilhelm Koppe, an accused war criminal under arrest here.
Koppe was apprehended recently discharges that he participated in the mass murder of 340,000 Jews and Poles in the death camp of the Chelmno Concentration Compound, in Poland.
A number of German papers, playing up the arrest of Koppe and the recent convictions of other prominent ex-Nazis, are outspoken in insisting that the Government should have demanded that Eichmann be extradited to this country, for trial in the German courts.
QUESTION ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO TRY EICHMANN
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung conceded that the abduction from Argentina of “a sub-human character like Eichmann” was “an extraordinary case.” Nevertheless, this newspaper held, there are “apprehensions about the violation of international law” in his capture. Furthermore, the editorial declared, there is a question as to whether “the Jews have the right to take the law in their own hands.”
Another Frankfurt newspaper, the Rundschau, expressed astonishment over the Government’s quick decision not to request Eichmann’s extradition to Germany. “Although no extradition treaty exists between Bonn and Israel,” the newspaper pointed out, “a special agreement could surely be reached in this case.”
Die Welt, mass circulation daily published by the Axel Springer interests in Hamburg, declared that “we Germans have a right to judge those (like Eichmann) who are responsible for the misery they brought, not only to Jews, but to us as well.”
PROPOSES INTERNATIONAL U.N. TRIBUNAL
DietZeit, in a front-page article, proposed that Eichmann be tried by a tribunal formed under the United Nations convention outlawing genocide “because not only the Jews in Israel, but also those living in other countries should be symbolically represented.”
In the Deutsche Zeitung, Israel’s right to try Eichmann was acknowledged, but the question was raised whether Israel was not risking ; “its fundamental dependence on international law by satisfying the vengeful anger of its people–no matter how justified these emotions may be.”
Der Spiegel which had declared that Israel was planning a “show trial” for Eichmann as a form of “blackmail” against West Germany, in an effort to bring pressure upon the West German Government to continue economic aid to Israel after the German-Israel Reparations Agreement expires within the next few years, was answered this week. An editorial in the current issue of the Algemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden, attitude organ of the Jewish community of Germany, protested against Der Spiegel’s attitude in this regard.
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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.
