Dr. Robert Servatius, who will be the defense counsel for Adolf Eichmann in the trial starting here March 15, said today that if Eichmann, who directed the mass-annihilation of 6,000,000 Jews under Hitler, is convicted and sentenced to death, the verdict would be appealed immediately.
The Cologne attorney expressed the hope that the Eichmann trial would not last longer than two months. He also said he hoped that only a part of the 5,000 pages of Eichmann’s confessions, made in reply to police interrogations, would be read into the court record and thus shorten the proceedings.
Dr. Servatius revealed that the Eichmann family received about $5,000 for Eichmann’s memoirs published in Life magazine in New York and that the family gave him $4,000 of that sum as part of his defense fee.
Dr. Servatius made these points to press representatives before leaving Israel temporarily for West Germany. He explained his departure as due to the fact that he still had not been given a charge sheet or a copy of the evidence against his client. He had arrived in Israel last Sunday with announced plans to remain for the trial.
Asserting he should have been informed of a decision to postpone presentation of the charge sheet, he told reporters at the airport that if he had been notified, he would have postponed his arrival earlier this week. A last minute decision by the prosecution to introduce changes in the charge sheet caused delay in its completion.
IS REFUSED PERMISSION TO MEET ALONE WITH EICHMANN IN JAIL
The attorney also complained about the refusal of Israeli authorities to allow him to meet privately with Eichmann. He said the Israelis insisted there should be no direct contact between Eichmann and anyone and that, even now, his talks with his client were held in the presence of a guard. He said that during his stay in West Germany, he would meet with the chairman of the local bar association to discuss with him that refusal. He added that the stay would be a short one and that he expected to return to Israel soon with his aides, another West Germany attorney and a secretary.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Gideon Hausner went today to Haifa to meet with officers of the special police Sixth Bureau assigned to collect evidence against Eichmann and with Dr. Robert Kempner, an American Jurist who has come to Israel as an adviser on trial questions relating to the Nuremberg trials where he served on the United States prosecution team.
Dr. Kempner described Dr. Servatius as an “excellent defense counsel who is a great legal fighter.” The American jurist recalled that Servatius defended a number of Nazis in Nuremberg, some of whom were later hanged. Dr. Kempner dismissed any possibility that Dr. Servatius would succeed in his plan to dispute the validity of Israeli laws against Nazi war criminals. He said that many courts throughout Europe had overruled objections to trial of Nazi war criminals under such laws.
Foreign correspondents were taken on a tour for the first time today of the area and the court building in the center of Jerusalem where the trial will be held. The building is surrounded by a thick wire fence. The single entrance to the building will be guarded by police sitting in a bunker-like enclosure behind a thick concrete wall.
The building was originally planned–and will be used after the trial–as a community center. The main auditorium will serve as the courtroom where Eichmann will sit in a bullet-proof glass enclosure in front of the judges’ bench. The main floor will be reserved for more than 400 journalists. There will be a 250-seat balcony for the public who will be admitted only after a police search for weapons in special search booths. The entire floor below the courtroom is being equipped for the press. Facilities will include work space for 250 correspondents, postal and cable facilities and four broadcasting studios.
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.
