The Long Nightmare

All week long the grim recital of Jewry's nightmare under the Nazi regime continued. A father told how he had been forced to throw the bodies of his son and daughter on the crematory fires. An Israeli electrical worker described an SS man courteously asking a mother to hand over her baby, then dashing its head against the pavement. Other witnesses testified that the Nazi soldiers delighted in testing their revolver marksmanship by aiming at the tips of a Jew's fingers and nose, and forced husbands to have sex relations with other men's wives in view of their children.

The impassive Eichmann, meticulously taking notes, sat inside his glass cage. Once, during the testimony of a Warsaw ghetto revolt leader, the packed courtroom suddenly went dark. Outside, a truck had collided with a power line, cutting off electricity for blocks around. Only a single spotlight powered by an emergency security generator remained on, focused on Eichmann's cage. In its glare, the startled Eichmann turned his back on the courtroom, covered his face with his hand. As a Polish Jew was recounting the deportation of 10,000 Jews to Belsen extermination camp, a balcony spectator suddenly leaped up shouting "Bloodhound! Bloodhound!" Eichmann paled and swallowed hard. As guards escorted him out, the man cried: "Let me kill him with my own hands, let me hit him just once--he killed all my family."

Long accounts of Jewish suffering and degradation at Nazi hands were beginning to get on Israeli nerves. Tel Aviv Magistrate Moshe Bejski was recounting how 15,000 inmates of Plaszow camp had been herded together to watch hangings in 1943. Snapped Prosecuting Attorney Gideon Hausner: "Fifteen thousand people were standing there and only a few hundred guards were facing you--why didn't you revolt and charge and attack these guards?" Staggered by the question, Bejski asked permission to sit, blurted: "After 18 years I cannot describe the feeling of fear . . . there was belief the war would end one day . . . to revolt would endanger 15,000 men . . . where could a Jew run?" He concluded weakly: "I doubt if we can find reasons today."

It is a question that has begun to puzzle and even embarrass proud young Israelis. "We licked 40 million Arabs," said one, "and we were a little more than half a million. We had few arms. But I suppose Germans are not Arabs: and we were fighting on our own soil. Still, I am not convinced."

In all the testimony tumbling out of the witnesses' bitter personal memories last week, the name of Adolf Eichmann was hardly mentioned. Time and again Presiding Judge Moshe Landau warned Prosecutor Hausner of irrelevance. At week's end, his patience clearly exhausted, Judge Landau bluntly told Hausner to get to the point.

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