Understanding Justice: Fifty Years since the Eichmann Trial

Welcome to the 23rd issue of Teaching the Legacy. This edition commemorates fifty years since Adolf Eichmann was tried and convicted in a Jerusalem courtroom. We have included articles about the trial and how it affected the Israeli communal narrative. Since the trial was the first time where survivor testimony was heard publicly in Israel, we have interviewed Dr. Dori Laub who has spent much of his life interviewing survivors, placing importance on oral history. In addition, we are featuring our new online educational sub-site to mark Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). As always, the newsletter features new publications, book reviews, and updates on recent and upcoming activities at the International School for Holocaust Studies and across Yad Vashem. We hope you find this issue interesting and resourceful and we look forward to your feedback.

The Eichmann Trial: Introduction and Suggestions for Classroom Use

Yael Weinstock Mashbaum

Adolf Eichmann’s role in the “Final Solution” is one that has been described in different terms since the end of World War II, especially as Nazi hunting and war crimes trials were beginning. Eichmann served in the Gestapo and the SS as chief of RSHA (Department of Security), and was ultimately responsible for the deportation of over 1.5 million Jews from all over Europe to killing centers and sites in Poland and the Soviet Union. Touting himself and sometimes recognized by others as a mere bureaucrat who sat behind an office desk, it was the specifics of his job, which made him...

Fifty Years Since the Eichmann Trial

IntroductionThe Eichmann trial was one of three major trials of the 20th century and remains the most highly publicized trial in Israel's history. The Eichmann trial was in fact the only Holocaust trial that took place in Israel. Other trials, such as the Kastner trial and the Demjanjuk trial, cannot really be categorized as Holocaust trials but rather as cases that dealt with specific issues within the history of the Holocaust. During the trial the prosecution sought to cover the entire story of the Holocaust before the Israeli public. However, every story or episode from the Holocaust did...

Interview with Professor Dori Laub, Expert on Interviews and Survivor Testimony

Dr. Naama Shik, Merav Jano, Yael Weinstock Mashbaum

Scholars and Educators

Professor Dori Laub was born in Czernowitz, Romania in 1937. With his parents, he was deported to Transnistria in 1942. His father disappeared during a German raid prior to liberation by the Soviets and he and his mother were reunited with his grandparents who had survived in Czernowitz. He immigrated to Israel in 1950 where he attended medical school. Today he is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University and a psychoanalyst in private practice. In 1979 he co-founded the Holocaust Survivors' Film Project, Inc., which subsequently became the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust...

The Jewish Community in Salonika - A Learning Environment

This website, new for Yom Hashoah, features the story of the Jews from Salonika, Greece. Based on the testimony film about Holocaust survivor Ovadia Baruch, this learning environment delves into the food, culture, and religious aspects of prewar Greek Jewish life, and follows them through their deportation to concentration and death camps, mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Focusing on interdisciplinary tools which can be used in the classroom, students can follow Ovadia through his life via film clips, while reading detailed descriptions of the prewar and Holocaust periods in Greece. In an effort...