Trial's End

Through three successive days last week, hoarse-voiced Prosecuting Attorney Gideon Hausner stretched out his final summation against Adolf Eichmann, whom he described as "more evil than Hitler." It was all a little anticlimactic. After listening to one more repetition of Eichmann's crimes, an Israeli spectator complained impatiently, "Why do we need all this? Every baby in Israel knows Eichmann is guilty."

But, determined that the rest of the world should not consider the four-month trial a "legal lynching by vengeful Jews." Prosecutor Hausner exhaustively reexamined every scrap of testimony Eichmann had offered in his defense. Hausner divided the Nazi extermination program into three stages: 1) throwing the Jews out of Germany. 2) concentrating them in Poland. 3) herding all of the Jews of Europe into death ovens. In each of these stages, Hausner insisted, "Eichmann fulfilled an executive task of the first importance."

Eichmann listened to the summation with twitching eyes and hands in his lap, the fingertips lightly touching each other. The rocklike immobility of his body gave spectators the impression that rigor mortis had already set in. This week Eichmann's West German attorney. Dr. Robert Servatius, will base his final plea for the defense on the question of the court's jurisdiction and impartiality.

After hearing Servatius. the three Israeli judges will adjourn the court to consider their verdict--which can hardly be anything but guilty. Prosecutor Hausner has made it clear that he will then ask for the death penalty. Eichmann can appeal his case to the Israeli Supreme Court and, failing there, can ask clemency of Israel's President Isaac Ben-Zvi.

Most Israelis seem impatient at the delays. A Jerusalem lawyer conceded last week that Hausner had not proved Eichmann was the "main cog'' in exterminating Jews. Too many others were involved, he said, "to pin all the blame on one man." Then he added: "But what does it matter if you hang Eichmann as a big or a little cog, so long as you hang him?" With the death penalty accepted as inevitable (though the 13-year-old state of Israel has never hanged anyone before), some Israelis wonder what should be done with Eichmann's body. A former inmate of a Nazi death camp explained, "We cannot profane the Holy Land by burying that Satan here. But if we send the body to Argentina or Germany, neo-Nazis will make a shrine of his grave." His solution: "Dump the corpse in midocean, or send it into outer space."

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