Deborah Lipstadt

Ben Gurion’s unexpected announcement in May 1960 of Adolf Eichmann’s arrest in Buenos Aires made headlines around the world. Israel’s court proceedings against Eichmann, one of the "Chief Operating Officers" of the Final Solution, was the first time since Bayit Sheni that Jews sat in judgment on someone who had done them harm. Hundreds of reporters from throughout the world were present, and American television filmed the proceedings. Over 100 survivors gave testimony. After a five month trial, Eichmann was sentenced to death, the only person in Israel thus far to ever receive that punishment. We shall explore the multi-faceted impact of this trial on Israeli society, Diaspora Jewry, Germany, and the realm of international law, and the ways the trial changed the world of the survivors, their children, and all those who have ever heard a survivor tell their story.

One of the "reporters" covering the Eichmann trial was the political theorist and first women to ever receive a full professorship at Princeton, Hannah Arendt. A German-born Jew, she wrote a series of articles for The New Yorker which were eventually republished as "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." Her comments on the trial sparked an intellectual and political battle of unique proportions (and it continues to today). Her critics condemned her report as a "tasteless assault," "wicked," and "gratuitous and distorted." She was branded a "self-hating Jewess" who was "pro-Eichmann." Her fans were no less extreme in their evaluation. They called it "brilliant," a "masterpiece," and "splendid and extraordinary." What did she say? And why were both those who skewered her and those who praised her only telling half the story?

In 2000, I spent three months in a British High Court defending myself against charges of libel. David Irving, the world's leading Holocaust denier, had sued me for libel for calling him a Holocaust denier. My legal team, aided by a group of leading Holocaust historians, established a defense strategy based not on proving the Holocaust happened but proving that what deniers say happened did not happen. This session will track the story of the trial and its impact on Holocaust deniers worldwide.