On Sentencing Eichmann to Death

Extract

Eichmann has been executed. In its public and historical aspects, the Eichmann case is at an end. All the lessons that might possibly be learned from the great trial that terminated in Eichmann's death sentence can already be studied in full. Now the time has come to embark on the soul-searching the affair demands, and there is no end to thoughts and questions, most of which are without answer.

Those who approved of Eichmann's being put before the bar of justice, those who upheld the trial itself as well as the form chosen for it by the authorities, those who saw in the trial a tremendous moral achievement in educating the nation towards a major historical reckoning — a task as necessary to undertake as it must necessarily fail — in short, all those who are primarily concerned with the public, moral and historical aspects of the trial rather than with its legal side — they are the ones who are bound to ask themselves whether the execution of Eichmann was indeed the appropriate finish to this enormous issue. I am certain that many thousands and hundreds of thousands of the people of this land are still preoccupied with this question, and I propose to answer it as best I can.