Fifty years ago in April, 1961, the trial of Adolf Eichmann opened in Jerusalem. At first most observers concentrated on the details of the amazing arrest of the former SS officer hiding in Argentina under an assumed name. The trial informed the world about the gigantic enterprise of extermination and murder carried out by Nazi Germany against the Jews that is now called the Holocaust. RAI---Italian State radio---asked a professor of history and political science who had emigrated from Italy to Palestine in 1947 to report to its listeners. His account came as the trial unfolded with vivid descriptions of the proceedings and how the Israeli public was reacting to the shocking revelations that a worldwide audience discovered for the first time. The author kept his notes as a daily chronicle so that the drama taking place in the courtroom was preserved and became this book. The Eichmann Trial Diary therefore offers a very different view from that of the philosopher Hannah Arendt writing for The New Yorker or the historians reconstructing the event decades later. This account stands out as the best kind of journalism and popular history. It is in the process of being translated into Hebrew for distribution into the Israeli educational system.
Sergio Minerbi, PhD is a professor of history at Jerusalem University and served as Israeli ambassador to the Ivory Coast and to Belgium. He lives in Jerusalem.
