The Eichmann Trial

SESSION 120 of the trial of Adolf Eichmann took place in the afternoon of Wednesday, December 13, 1961. In this session, following the rendering of the verdict in SESSIONS 115-119, the Prosecution and Defense are given the opportunity to address the sentence before it is handed down. Attorney General Gideon Hausner speaks first, imploring the Court to issue the death penalty. Defense Attorney Dr. Robert Servatius issues a plea for a lesser sentence. Finally, Eichmann himself is given the opportunity to speak for the first time since SESSION 109 nearly five months earlier. Reading from prepared remarks, he proclaims his disappointment in the guilty verdict, casts himself as a victim of his superiors, asks the Jewish People for forgiveness “on a personal level”, and reiterates his innocence.

Unlike the first 114 sessions of the trial, which were recorded onto videotape, the final sessions were recorded using film cameras. Because of the expense and complexity of procuring, developing and storing film, most of SESSION 120 was not recorded at all, and only about 20 minutes survives altogether. As none of the footage beyond SESSION 114 was preserved among the official trial tapes, the footage presented here has been cobbled together from a variety of sources. As such, video and audio quality varies significantly, and much of the material includes watermarks, timecode and edits made by those respective sources. Portions of the audio of Hausner’s statement survive only in a German-language spoken translation.

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The beginning and end of the recording, during which Court is not in session, feature image but no audio. Conversely, a significant portion of the surviving material from SESSION 120 was preserved via a commemorative vinyl record, and does not feature any synced image. In some instances, images from elsewhere in the session have been used to cover this section, resulting in video that is not synced correctly with the audio.