Language:
English
Year of publication:
2012
Titel der Quelle:
Yad Vashem Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
40,2 (2012) 137-171
Keywords:
Eichmann, Adolf,
;
War crime trials
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust survivors
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Law
Abstract:
Reconsiders the simplistic view that the Eichmann trial was the watershed event which caused a change in the Israeli attitude toward the Holocaust and its survivors. The revision of Israelis' attitude toward the Nazi mass murder of Jews and the role of the "passive" victims in it was a decade-long process which culminated in the enactment of the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day in 1959. The trial took place within a society that had already begun to revise its attitude toward the Holocaust and the behavior of its victims. It was during the debates in the Knesset over the proper name and date of Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, that the legislators expanded the notion of heroism to include the preservation of human dignity and the very survival of Jews in the Holocaust. From 1959, the commemoration of the Holocaust ceased to be a private matter of the survivors and became a national issue. Contends that the significance of the Eichmann trial is different from previous trials held in Israel in accordance with the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law (trials of former Kapos in Nazi camps, the "Kasztner trial" of 1954-58). In the Eichmann trial, for the first time, the accused was not a Jewish victim but a Nazi German murderer. The trial became the first platform for survivors to relate their sufferings to a wide audience. It marked a reconciliation between the political parties of Israel over the issue of the Holocaust - the Holocaust ceased to be a tool of inter-party struggle as it had been in the 1950s.
Note:
In English and Hebrew.
URL:
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