Everything was in readiness here today for the last and final stage of the juridical proceedings against Adolf Eichmann. On Tuesday morning, the ex-Gestapo colonel, convicted and sentenced to death for directing the annihilation of 6,000,000 European Jews, will begin hearing the ultimate court judgment and verdict by a five-judge panel of Israel’s Supreme Court.
Jerusalem’s Beth Ha’am, the Civic Center used for his four-month trial by the Jerusalem District Court a year ago, and later reconstituted as a court room by the Supreme Court panel, is ready for Tuesday’s proceedings. Strict security precautions have been set up inside and around the building. Eichmann himself will be transferred tomorrow night from Ramie Prison, where he has been kept since he had been sentenced to execution, and will be lodged once more under heavy guard inside the converted Civic Center.
Translation of the long verdict–nearly 90 pages–was completed today from the original Hebrew into English, German and French. The reading of the High Tribunal’s judgment and final verdict is expected to take up at least all of the day, Tuesday.
(From Vienna, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported today that circles close to Austrian police said a plot had been hatched there last summer by Horst Eichmann, the prisoner’s third son, for the abduction of Eichmann and his “rescue” from Israel, Horst Eichmann, a sailor, it was learned, had discussed his father’s recapture with Robert Verbelen, the No. 2 wartime leader of the Belgian Nazis, who is now under arrest for war crimes at Vienna. Horst Eichmann was reported also to have involved in his planned conspiracy other former, highly decorated Nazis.)
Dr. Robert Servatius, Eichmann’s German chief of counsel, arrived in Israel today, coming from Cologne a day earlier than expected. He started conferring immediately with Israeli officials about the legal steps necessary if he is to file an appeal for clemency, in case the Supreme Court upholds the District Court’s death sentence. He had said earlier that, if the High Tribunal confirms the lower court’s death sentence, he would take the only other step open here–an appeal for clemency to President Izhak Ben-Zvi.
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.
