30.04.2011 26.Nisan, 5771 Kedischim; Tag 11 des Omer
Warum keine Hilfe:
After covering the Eichmann trial, which opened in 1961 in Jerusalem, Naphtali Lavie, at the time a correspondent for Haaretz, wrote three articles in which he criticized the Zionist leadership for its failure to rescue European Jewry. But the articles were shelved: Lavie feared they would be damaging to many people who were still alive. To mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, which corresponds this year with the 50th anniversary of the Eichmann trial, Haaretz is publishing them here for the first time.
The trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann opened in the auditorium of Beit Ha'am in Jerusalem on April 11, 1961. Naphtali Lavie, at the time a reporter for Haaretz and himself a Holocaust survivor (see box ), was assigned to cover the trial, together with Amos Elon. Hovering over the event was the shadow of another famous trial from the previous decade, popularly known as the "Kastner trial," in which the Zionist leadership was castigated for being indifferent to the fate of European Jewry and for its failure to carry out large-scale rescue operations. In 1944, Reszo (Israel ) Kastner, who was active in the Zionist Labor Movement in Hungary, became head of the Aid and Rescue Committee, a Budapest-based Jewish group. In that capacity, he held negotiations with Eichmann, who visited Hungary in 1944 in order to organize the extermination of its Jews. Another member of the committee, Joel Brand, was sent to Palestine in order to present the Nazis' demands (10,000 trucks in return for one million Jews ). In the end, the Nazis agreed to spare only a few Jews and deported hundreds of thousands to the death camps….