Original subtitles

during the Second World War.

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

I'm in front of the building where, in only a few hours' time,

what's been described as "the trial of the century" will begin.

And the eyes of the world will fall upon Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi

responsible for organising the mass murder of six million European Jews.

On April 11th, 1961,

former Nazi Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolph Eichmann

of the German paramilitary organisation known as the SS,

entered the District Court of Jerusalem

to be tried by the Government of Israel.

Eichmann had been a Senior State official in Germany

during the Second World War.

He was in charge of the forced movement of millions of Jews

across the continent of Europe.

Many were transported and killed in concentration camps.

One of the survivors of the camps

and a witness at the Eichmann trial was Yehuda Bacon.

At the age of 14, Bacon had been an inmate of Auschwitz.

There was this very famous glass cell where they put in Eichmann.

He couldn't look longer than a very short time.

He didn't want to look into my eyes.

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: 'The Commander took pity on us and said,

' "Children, it's very cold outside.

' "Perhaps you can get warm in the gas chambers." '

The trial of Adolph Eichmann was recorded for television

and shown in 37 countries.

Stay in close on Eichmann.

Copy.

It was the world's first global TV documentary series.

Camera one on the judge's bench.

A member of the production team who sat in the control room

was Alan Rosenthal.

He was just 21 years old at the time.

Then I came into the gallery and looked at him -

a man in a black suit, quite tall, rather scrawny, rat-like fellow,

thin-faced, twitching eyes, gestures that he was trying to control.

The trial of Eichmann lasted four months.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

A committed member of the Nazi party,

in 1933, Eichmann was appointed head of the department of the SS

responsible for Jewish affairs.

In 1942, the policy of the German state towards the Jews

in all the territory that they controlled changed dramatically.

A policy of forced migration became one of mass murder.

Gabriel Bach was deputy prosecutor at Eichmann's trial.

The Gestapo and the SS and the Nazi regime...

The only one who was kept all during the war

as Head of the Jewish Department of the SS was Eichmann.

In court, Eichmann was accused of helping to organise

the mass murder of millions of Jews...

..a programme of murder that cost the lives

of some 1.5 million children.

The charge sheet reflected the deep hatred Eichmann felt for the Jews,

a remarkable hatred noticed even by his fellow officers.

I was sitting in my office in this prison and I was reading

the autobiography of Rudolf Hess. He was the commander of Auschwitz.

Hess explained, "When I and my colleagues had to push

"the children into the gas chambers, my knees were getting a bit wobbly.

"But I was always afterwards ashamed of this weakness of mine

"because Eichmann explained to us that it was

"especially the Jewish children that have to be killed first.

He says, "Because where is the logic that you kill a generation

"of older people and you leave alive a generation of possible avengers

"who can afterwards create that race again?"

In his glass box, Eichmann's manner was lifeless and unemotional,

his voice sharp and high-pitched.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

These traits made it hard for people at the time to read his mind

and form part of the living memory of people today

who were involved in the trial.

When you looked at him, of course you wondered,

"What was he thinking?"

You were wondering, "Who is this man? What's going through his mind?"

For me, it was a question of how could such an evil arise

and get so much power?

He can do everything. Kill, do this, do that.

Our generation has to tell of the abyss

which is, in my opinion, in every human being.

Who is Eichmann?

What really was this man and how on Earth could this situation

of the Holocaust come about?

Those are the questions that start off from the trial

that go with you forever, not just on a day or a week,

but are totally resounding with you.

How could this happen?

How could people behave that way?

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: 'I felt him take the child from my arms.

'The child cried out and was shot.'

LOUD GUNFIRE

Get close on his eyes.

Close on his eyes.

With statements from over 100 witnesses

and consideration of 16,000 documents,

the prosecution took 56 days to make its case

in the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann,

in Jerusalem, 1961.

It was a comprehensive record of what was described at the time as

"a gigantic human and national disaster".

Gideon Hausner, the Attorney General of the State of Israel,

in his opening address said,

"I am speaking in the name of six million who are not here

"to accuse you because you killed them."

So that was the main thrust of the prosecution.

Eichmann had been an important figure in the Nazi regime

of Adolph Hitler in Germany.

He had been responsible for managing the deportation and forced migration

of Jews from their homes, right across the continent of Europe.

When Germany was defeated by the Allied powers in 1945,

Eichmann escaped into hiding in Argentina, South America,

taking the name Ricardo Klement.

Investigators tracked him down

and in 1960, he was snatched by secret agents and brought to Israel

to be tried for his crimes against humanity.

'Do you know now what these trucks were?'

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: 'Yes, now I know what they were.

'They were trucks where people were locked up inside

'and where gas was piped into the trucks.'

The survivors were very happy that somebody showed an interest in them.

Before that, nobody really took a serious interest in us.

At the trial, Yehuda Bacon shared his experience of

the extermination camp of Auschwitz and the suffering and humiliation

of those selected for murder in its eight gas chambers.

Bacon was 14 years old at the time.

There were people who didn't know what it is

and where they go, nothing.

The SS told them, "Hurry up, where you put your clothes,

"put your shoes nicely together.

"There's soup or coffees waiting for you."

And they went in and then what they saw,

they saw a shower.

It has no holes.

So there was a shower only to bluff you in the first minute.

People who couldn't... Who were cripples, I mean,

who had artificial legs and so on and so forth,

there was a kind of slide.

They throw the people and they landed just before the gas chamber.

Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Chelmno

were some of the most important extermination camps

listed in the indictment of Eichmann.

Chief Prosecutor Hausner's assistant remembers the testimony

of one camp survivor in particular,

a memory made famous by the feature film Schindler's List.

The survivor had been deported by freight train from Hungary

to Auschwitz in May 1944 with his wife, 12-year-old son

and 2½-year-old daughter.

The SS Commander, when he came there, he sent his wife to the left.

Clearly that went to the gas chambers.

"The little girl to the left...

"and your son, your son - run after your mother."

And the witness said, "I looked, my wife was swallowed up in the crowd.

"I couldn't see her any more.

"And my son was swallowed up, I couldn't see him.

"But my little daughter, she had a red coat.

"And that little red dot, getting smaller and smaller,

"this is how my family disappeared from my life."

Now, I heard this for the first time

and my little daughter was exactly two and a half years old

and I had bought her a red coat two weeks before that,

and when I heard the witness say this,

it cut off my voice completely.

I suddenly couldn't utter a word.

The television was on me

and I started playing with my documents.

It took perhaps two or three minutes.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

That was a feeling that hasn't left me until this very day.

There was one witness who summed up everything for me.

His name was Yehiel Dinur

and on the stand, he was asked to describe Auschwitz.

And he said, "For us, Auschwitz was like another planet."

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: '..out of this planet of Auschwitz.'

Auschwitz, another dark, malevolent planet

casting its evil shadow on the Earth.

And he said this...

and then he collapsed on the stand.

Camera three, ready.

Take three.

Camera four, ready.

The trial of Adolph Eichmann was the first documentary television series

that was broadcast around the world.

Stay on the bench of the judges.

It took place in 1961,

16 years after the end of the Second World War.

For prosecutors and survivors alike,

it was an historic opportunity to share some of the truth

of the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

The importance of the trial is that it told the Jewish story

of the Second World War for the first time.

It gave a face to the Nazis.

Before the trial started, some teachers called me and said

that there are many young people in Israel

who don't want to hear about the Holocaust.

Why? They feel a certain feeling of shame.

He cannot understand how millions of people

can let themselves be destroyed without defending themselves.

But we wanted to show how they were misled up to the last minute

and couldn't defend themselves.

The recording of the trial was the brainchild

of American television producer Milton Fruchtman.

Fruchtman had made documentary films in Israel

and features in the United States.

In the television drama The Eichmann Show,

Fruchtman is played by actor Martin Freeman.

On Fruchtman's team,

a young production assistant, Alan Rosenthal.

The first time I met Milton,

here was this producer who I knew had come from Hollywood,

so I was a little bit in awe.

But in fact, he turned out to be a very, very nice guy.

A good guy, a mensch, as we used to say in Hebrew or Yiddish.

Leo. Milton. Leo Hurwitz. I cannot tell you how...

Fruchtman hired Leo Hurwitz to direct the recording of the trial.

Hurwitz had made social documentary films on poverty, hunger

and racism in the United States.

He'd been blacklisted in the 1950s for his Communist sympathies

and then couldn't get work.

The team that produced the recording of the Eichmann trial

have acute memories of the man.

I'd like to introduce you to your camera operators.

'He was one of the greats of American documentary.

'He was nervous. He was edgy.'

Nobody could do the job as well as he could.

He could get very agitated and quite cross about things.

He was a very intense man, really.

OK, stop, stop. Stop!

If something went wrong, he would let you know.

The Israeli Prime Minister agreed to the recording of the trial

only if it was approved by the judges presiding over the case.

What is clearly taking place...

We are here to... on the cameras.

Fruchtman was in for a shock.

The three judges came into the courtroom

and the Chief Justice Landau looked out and said,

"There will be no television.

"There will be no cameras in this courtroom."

The judges had thought that cameras

would distract from proceedings of the trial.

Well, when I looked out, I realised I had made a big mistake.

I had left cameras out in the open, visible.

And of course, it could be disturbing for the witnesses.

They could become self-conscious, concerned about testifying

and all that sort of thing.

Fruchtman and Hurwitz came up with an ingenious solution.

Conceal the cameras by inserting them

into the walls of the courtroom.

The judges approved.

Take three. 'And on the following day...'

In the recordings of proceedings of the trial,

the camera direction of Leo Hurwitz was exceptional,

as his son, Tom, remembers.

Camera four, ready.

Let's go close on Eichmann.

No, no, not the witness.

Eichmann.

Here we had the drama unfold shot by shot,

question by question,

the way a film would be cut.

From close-up to close-up,

from reaction shot to reaction shot,

from detail and hands and cutaways to the audience.

It made it a real live drama.

In the production control room, the atmosphere was intense.

I'd been in control rooms before.

Not many, but I had been in a few and they were kind of lively and tense.

But this one was deadly serious.

For the production team,

the experience was one they would never forget.

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: 'I lay near my wife and two children

'and I wanted them to shoot me.'

In the television room, for four hours, you've been looking at hell.

You've been looking at the blackness of the human soul

and you'd go out and it was too much.

You'd go out and there'd be blue skies, the birds...

Kids were playing in the street.

To adjust these two worlds was one of the hardest things.

A world of blackness, evil and darkness

and a world of light, of humanity, of life.

It became very depressive, actually, depressing you.

It could easily get you into an awful mood of misery, really,

that you couldn't get out of.

You had to be very careful about that.

The trial was a landmark moment in history.

'We found girls carrying discs with boys names...'

And for many of those who took part, a pivotal moment in their lives.

The trial of Adolph Eichmann was a key moment in the development

of the State of Israel.

It opened a new chapter in the country's history,

just 12 years after the War of Independence ended in 1949.

I'll never forget the first moment of that trial

when these judges came into the courtroom with the emblem of Israel behind them

and that man who's only object in life had been to destroy that people.

When he stood up to attention

before a sovereign Jewish nation and sovereign state,

the importance of the creation of the State of Israel

suddenly became clearer to me.

The trial was intentionally framed to influence public opinion,

to raise awareness of the scale of the murder of Jews.

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: 'But it was his word

'that put gas chambers into action. He lifted the telephone...

'and railroad cars left for the extermination centres.'

Gideon Hausner made it appear as though there were only

two Adolphs responsible for the destruction of the Jewish people

during the Second World War,

Adolph Hitler and Adolph Eichmann,

with almost nothing and no-one in between.

So it was an extraordinarily powerful case.

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE

It had taken some six months to carefully select 112 survivors

to testify at the trial for maximum impact upon the viewing public.

THEY SPEAK THEIR OWN LANGUAGE

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: 'The SS man came up.

'He took the baby from my sister's arms

'and handed it over to my mother.

'Then he also took the five-year-old boy to my mother.'

TRANSLATION: 'And they are no longer alive?' 'No.'

'And no longer is your mother?' 'No.'

In the words of an Israeli journalist who covered the trial

for a national newspaper, "What had been silenced and repressed

"gushed out and became common knowledge."

HE SHOUTS IN OWN LANGUAGE

Over 80,000 Israelis attended court during the trial

and the stories of the atrocities that were shared shocked the world.

At the heart of many of the testimonies lay the terrible truth

about the largest extermination camp of all...

Auschwitz.

Prosecutor Gabriel Bach remembers the testimony

of one survivor in particular.

He was one of 200 children who were put into a gas chamber,

the doors locked...

And then he described how the children began to sing

in order to give themselves courage.

And when at first nothing happened,

the children began to shout and to cry.

A train had arrived with potatoes at Auschwitz

and there were not enough SS men to unload it.

So the commander of the SS there had the glorious idea,

"Why not use some of the children to help unload the train

"before they are killed?"

So they opened the door and they took out 20

of the nearest to the door, he was one of those.

And then they closed the door

and the other 180 were killed right away.

Auschwitz was a filthy, dirty place run by...

barbaric, sadistic, murderous men,

in which the lives of ordinary human beings were made utterly miserable,

tortured, humiliated before they were killed.

The recording of witnesses' experience for television

by producer Milton Fruchtman and his team,

and its broadcast to audiences around the world,

sharpened global understanding of Nazi murder as genocide

and as a distinct chapter of history.

We recorded over 1,000 miles of videotape.

Excerpts of the trial were sent to 56 countries

throughout the world that had television.

80% of the German population...

had seen between 30 minutes and one hour of television excerpts

of the Eichmann trial.

The accused also sought to influence public opinion

through his appearance and manner in court.

During extensive interrogation and cross-examination,

he sought to portray himself as a particular kind of character.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Eichmann saw himself as a soldier, a warrior.

He believed that he was an honourable man

doing a difficult but important job.

He was a good citizen, not a monster.

And that's what he wanted the world to understand

and posterity to understand.

Influencing public opinion was central to the trial,

for both the prosecution and Eichmann himself.

But this was a judicial process

and if Eichmann failed in his defence, one fate awaited him...

execution.

At his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann

looked every bit the smart professional,

in his sharp suit, studious spectacles and rigorous manner.

But did this cold correctness conceal a ruthless character?

At one point Eichmann said, "I delivered them to the butcher."

And by that he meant,

"I wasn't responsible

"for the mass shootings in Russia,

"I wasn't responsible for the extermination camps,

"but I was responsible for registering Jews,

"for rounding them up, for getting them on the trains,

"for transporting them across Europe

"to places where they would be unloaded and murdered within an hour."

SHOUTS IN GERMAN

In the 1930s, before the outbreak of the Second World War,

Eichmann was a senior figure in the Security Service of the Nazi Party

in Germany, with responsibility for what was described as

"de-Jewification" of the country.

From 1939 onwards,

as perception of the Jews in Nazi Germany changed,

so the policy of forced migration changed over time

to one of extermination.

Eichmann and the men around him believe they're in a war

to the death, "It's them or us.

"We exterminate the Jews or they exterminate us."

The Jews were the enemy.

They were a global power involved in a great international conspiracy

against the German people and the Aryan volk, the Aryan people.

Six million Jews, about two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe,

died in the systematic programme of state-sponsored mass murder that followed.

Almost half of these were killed in extermination camps...

..the remainder in ghettos that isolated Jews from non-Jews

across the continent...

..by mobile killing squads and by the forced movement of prisoners.

Eichmann was blamed for it all.

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: 'After everything had been wrung out of

'them, yet he was the one who planned, initiated and organised

'or instructed others to spill this ocean of blood.'

Eichmann's defence...

he was an unfortunate middle-ranking officer in state security,

responsible solely for the transportation of Jews.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

'He depicted himself as hapless,

'as someone who really had no choice in the matter.'

He wasn't making up the policy, he was simply implementing it

and it wasn't up to him to question what the big bosses,

as he used to call them,

had decided should be the fate of the Jews.

Through most of the trial, Eichmann sat and listened to proceedings

alone, unmoved, looking at times almost removed.

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: 'I couldn't have anticipated

'when I joined the Nazi Party...'

Under cross-examination,

his responses were detailed...

very detailed.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Eichmann's defence lawyer told him,

"Be boring, be bureaucratic.

"Be pedantic.

"You don't want to look a slavering monster who wants to grab Jews

"and tear them limb from limb. You want to present yourself

"as a sort of middle manager, a rather harassed bureaucrat.

"That you're dealing with genocide is something that should be

"as far away from your expressions, your concerns, as possible."

At trial, Eichmann and the wider world was exposed to the horror

of Nazi murder when films shot at the time of the liberation

of the concentration camps were shown to the court.

Cross-examined for 50 hours, Eichmann's defence finally buckled.

TRANSLATION ON FOOTAGE: '..had been told by the Reichsfuhrer...

'No, if the Reichsfuhrer had told you that he was,

'would you have shot him?'

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Prosecutors demonstrated

that he threw himself into tasks with fervour.

He seized the initiative.

He had a choice.

If there was one moment, it was the moment when the court heard

that he had told his colleagues in Berlin in the last weeks of the war

that if he was going to have to jump into his grave,

he would jump into his grave gladly,

knowing that he was taking five million Jews with him.

Now, that disrupted any image people had of him

as someone who just took orders in a rather mindless way.

And I think after that, for him, there was no going back,

there was no getting him out of that.

On 11th December 1961,

the three judges at trial presented their 211-page judgment.

It took them 15 hours to read.

Eichmann was guilty of crimes against the Jewish people,

against humanity, against Slovenes, Poles and Gypsies,

guilty of war crimes.

And he was sentenced to death.