***NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST (2012)***
Part of the Jewish Encounter series
The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in
Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an
Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on
where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice,
and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a
watershed moment in how the civilized world in general and Holocaust
survivors in particular found the means to deal with the legacy of
genocide on a scale that had never been seen before.
Award-winning historian Deborah E. Lipstadt gives us an overview of the
trial and analyzes the dramatic effect that the survivors' courtroom
testimony--which was itself not without controversy--had on a world that
had until then regularly commemorated the Holocaust but never fully
understood what the millions who died and the hundreds of thousands who
managed to survive had actually experienced.
As the world continues to confront the ongoing reality of genocide and
ponder the fate of those who survive it, this trial of the century,
which has become a touchstone for judicial proceedings throughout the
world, offers a legal, moral, and political framework for coming to
terms with unfathomable evil. Lipstadt infuses a gripping narrative with
historical perspective and contemporary urgency.
