SESSION CV
ABOUT THIS SESSION
SESSION 105 of the trial of Adolf Eichmann took place in the afternoon of Thursday, July 20, 1961. Following Attorney General Gideon Hausner’s request at the end of SESSION 104 to submit into evidence excerpts from the transcripts of Eichmann’s interviews with Dutch journalist Willem Sassen, the session begins with the Court’s decision to admit those passages. With Eichmann’s two-week-long cross-examination having concluded in the morning session, Defense Counsel Dr. Robert Servatius conducts his re-examination of Eichmann, posing questions related to topics discussed during the cross-examination, including: Eichmann’s relationship and interviews with Sassen; the ranks of the department heads with whom Eichmann dealt while in Hungary; Eichmann’s own rank and the powers conferred by it; a memo in which Eichmann is said to have recommended shooting Jews; whether department heads were aware of the extermination; his involvement in deporting Jews from the Generalgouvernement; his involvement in procuring gas; an incident in which a warrant was issued for his arrest; and the advantages for Jews of their deportation and resettlement. The judges then begin their direct examination of Eichmann, beginning with Judge Yitzhak Raveh. Raveh opens by asking Eichmann about his understanding of the Kantian categorical imperative, before moving on to discussion of the number of Jews believed to have been killed during the Second World War.
SESSION 105 survives nearly in its entirety, with only one segment of just a few seconds missing from the existing material. The first 75 seconds or so, during which the court is still in recess, suffers from degraded video quality.
NOTABLE MOMENTS
0:00:00 - Court not in session
0:02:10 - Judges enter
0:02:31 - Session 105 begins
0:03:32 - Decision allowing submission of certain transcripts of the Sassen interviews
0:07:36 - Re-Examination of Eichmann by the Defense
0:08:14 - Re-Examination on documents he rejected as forgeries
0:09:45 - Re-Examination on the Sassen transcripts
0:40:49 - Presiding Judge scolds Servatius for asking leading questions
0:51:14 - Re-Examination on the ranks of those Eichmann dealt with in Hungary
1:09:08 - Eichmann on whether he took part in dividing up Jewish property
1:11:33 - Eichmann on whether high-level departments knew about the extermination
1:15:36 - Servatius accidentally knocks microphone over
1:21:05 - A focusing error reveals the chicken-wire through which the cameras are recording
1:22:11 - Eichmann on his involvement in deporting Jews from the Generalgouvernement
1:26:59 - Eichmann on his involvement in procuring gas
1:32:01 - Eichmann recalls an incident in which a warrant was issued for his arrest
1:40:28 - Eichmann argues that deportation of Austrian Jews was beneficial for the Jews
1:45:03 - Eichmann says the Nisko resettlement project was ‘the least of all the evils’
1:46:24 - Re-Examination on the ‘Blood for Goods/Goods for Blood’ deal
1:53:09 - Re-Examination on Chaim Weizmann’s alleged declaration of war on Germany
1:54:30 - Re-Examination on the proposed transfer of Theodor Herzl’s remains
1:57:03 - Re-Examination on Eichmann’s attitude toward the Jewish people
1:57:49 - Eichmann appears to lose track of what is happening
1:58:16 - Eichmann says he was not anti-Semitic
2:04:46 - Direct Examination of Eichmann by Judge Yitzhak Raveh
2:05:01 - Direct Examination on Eichmann’s understanding of the categorical imperative
2:20:48 - Direct Examination on the number of Jews killed in WWII
2:22:55 - Eichmann reads a document in which he estimates Jewish wartime deaths at 5 million
2:32:28 - Court is adjourned
2:32:45 - Eichmann exits
TRANSCRIPT
Material highlighted green survives in video form.
Material highlighted pink has been lost.