After 10 weeks of open trial, after testimony by 110 witnesses, the piling up of a record 2,000,000 words and the submission of some 1,400 documents, the prosecution of Case No. 40/61–the Attorney General of Israel vs. Adolf the son of Karl Adolf Eichmann–will come to a close here tomorrow. The prosecution will rest.
Only some technicalities remain before the prosecution’s part of the case is over. Last Friday, the defense, headed by Dr. Robert Servatius, objected strenuously to the introduction into the record of what Attorney General Gideon Hausner calls the complete and unexpurgated memoirs of Eichmann. These memoirs are on magnetic tape on which Eichmann recorded his life story four years ago in a Buenos Aires tavern, when he unburdened himself to a Nazi friend, Willem Sassan. The latter used this autobiography as the basis for a series of articles he sold subsequently to an American magazine.
Dr. Servatius’ objection was taken under advisement by the court, which will rule to morrow whether the tape is admissible as evidence. Mr. Hausner has obtained 62 of the original 67 reels of tape, and insists that the tape shows the real Eichmann story, is “less inhibited” and “less sugar-coated” than the story as written by Sassan.
Once this hurdle has been surmounted, the prosecution will be done, and Dr. Servatius will be given the opportunity of putting Eichmann on the witness stand. The defense is expected to be granted a recess until next Monday, June 19, before putting Eichmann on the stand.
(In Vienna, the Austrian authorities announced the arrest of Franz Slavik, identified in testimony at the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem as a Nazi who had helped Eichmann kill a Jewish boy at Budapest in 1944. According to the Ministry of Justice, an investigation into Slavik’s war crimes activities had begun some years ago, but was dropped when insufficient evidence had been uncovered. Now, the Ministry stated, he will be tried for complicity in committing a war crime on the basis of the evidence given in the Eichmann trial.)
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.
