Adolf Eichmann: Fair Sentence?

[ljadw]

Eichmann was hanged 59 years ago;it is not on us living in a society that is very tolerant to criminals, to judge, 59 years later,that the execution of Eichmann was not fair and that his life should be spared .Only those who lived in 1962 ,17 years after the end of the war, and who were still suffering from what happened, had the right to say that the sentence was fair or not .
And, if my memory is not wrong, no one asked in 1962 that the life of Eichmann should be spared .
In 1921 8 people were hanged in Britain
In 1821 142 people were hanged in Britain .
It is not on us ,living in 2021, to say that these sentences were fair or not . They were fair for the people living in 1821 and 1921 .
We should not judge the past,because we also will become the past .

otherwise there are no moral lessons to be learned from it.

To learn moral lessons from the past is the last thing we should do : we can't undo the past and we can't change the future .

[Peter89]

Eichmann was hanged 59 years ago;it is not on us living in a society that is very tolerant to criminals, to judge, 59 years later,that the execution of Eichmann was not fair and that his life should be spared .Only those who lived in 1962 ,17 years after the end of the war, and who were still suffering from what happened, had the right to say that the sentence was fair or not .
And, if my memory is not wrong, no one asked in 1962 that the life of Eichmann should be spared .
In 1921 8 people were hanged in Britain
In 1821 142 people were hanged in Britain .
It is not on us ,living in 2021, to say that these sentences were fair or not . They were fair for the people living in 1821 and 1921 .
We should not judge the past,because we also will become the past .

otherwise there are no moral lessons to be learned from it.

To learn moral lessons from the past is the last thing we should do : we can't undo the past and we can't change the future .

That is, again, the realm of belief, so I'll leave you to it.

[gebhk]

Hi Sid

Please humour me explaining (again, if you so wish) what you think should have been done, in practical terms, with the senior leadership of the Third Reich in lieu of the Nuremburg Process?

Apologies - I wasn't sulking, I was distracted. My response was and remains that

I am not sidestepping the question - how the guilty should be punished. I am straight-up not answering it. I was not a victim and therefore do not feel justified in staking claims on their behalf - indeed I would consider that both arrogant in the extreme and inappropriate. Nor am I an expert in the law and as such have little to contribute on that matter other than the most general comments which I have already made.

To end this rather irrelevant and distracting tangent, it is probably worth going back to the point I made initially (#19) that you took objection to. I pointed out that the controversy is fuelled by the fact that the legal processes by which Eichmann (and many of his peers) were tried and convicted were deeply flawed. I don't think anyone would seriously say otherwise. What I think should or should not have have been done is irrelevant. That is what WAS done and we therefore have to live with the consequences - one of which is that people will argue that his conviction and senternce was unfair - and in law it clearly was. For the same reasons, the question whether it was the best option available - it may well have been - is also irrelevant to my point. You havn't contradicted this point but seem to be arguing a completely different one which I did not make.

As I said earlier, the law is very bad at dealing with corporate crime because that is not what it was designed for. It is very good at dealing with what it was designed for, which is individuals and their individual acts of wrongdoing. If Linkagain is correct that Eichmann committed an act of murder in Budapest in 1944 and if he had been extradited to Hungary, properly tried on the facts, found guilty and strung up in accordance with Hungarian law, no one would be crying foul on legal grounds.

Instead, what was attempted, both in the Eichmann case and the Nuremberg trials which set the precedent, was to combine political theatre - the prosecution of an entire state and its political system, a show trial, scapegoating and a criminal prosecution of individuals into one, all wrapped up with a pretence of the application of common law. This was never going to lead to a legally sound and uncontroversial conclusion, qed.

[gebhk]

I would however like to expand on the issue of what the actual victims, those on whose behalf Sid asked what should have been done, wanted. I cannot speak to what they all wanted, but can speak to what a small selection of Polish survivers said they wanted (one of them being my dad).

Firstly the concerns changed over time. At the time of their incarceration and in the months/years immediately after, they could not have cared less for the Eichmanns of this world or what happened to them. It was those individuals that had ill used them personally that they wanted to vent their pent up emotions on, if at all - and interestingly the greatest venom was reserved for those who had abused them emotionally rather than physically. Thus the women and kids in the surrounding villages that had verbally abused and thrown stones at them as they marched back and forth from work details were hated far more than, say, most of the guards. The Kapo, also a prisoner, who exceeded his 'authority' was more hated than the camp commandant. There was a Stockholm syndrome acceptance of 'the rules' and it was those that behaved 'unfairly' in the context of those rules that the victims wanted to see punished - and certainly not punished in any legal sense but a very direct and final one.

Over time, in many cases there was a subtle change. However, the reactions went to the extremes and again, little concerned themselves with middle management like Eichmann. Many felt that the entire German (and/or Russian depending on under whom they had suffered) nations should be exterminated. This was not an issue of justice for them, but of security. They did not feel safe while the German and/or Russian languages were still being spoken. You don't feel you are executing justice when you put a rabid dog down, you just do it because it is a danger. You may even feel sorry for the poor beast, but you do it nonetheless because there is no other option. Others (indeed often the same) came round to the point of view that (since the first was not practicable) forgiveness was the only and best option for their own sanity, wracked by their memories, PTSD and survivors guilt. If they could forgive their tormentors they could perhaps forgive themselves for surviving and perhaps reach a modus vivendi with those responsible to prevent such events happening again.

The important point is that I never met one who thought that there was a legal remedy for their suffering. What they had suffered was so monstrously unfair that no temporal justice could redress the balance. Seeking such an impossible goal simply stood in the way of their emotional healing. Which is not to say that there weren't many who were happy at seeing the Nuremberg and derivative trials and convictions. However this satisfaction was derived from seeing Germany and/or Nazism humbled and not from any sense of justice being done for them personally.

[ljadw]

A law can not be unfair : unfair/fair have no places in a legal system . The only thing that is important is if the trial and sentence were legal -they were -and if the people of 1962,who were and are the only ones who were concerned and the only ones who could give their opinion about the whole thing,approved or condemned the trial and the sentence .
Saying in 2021 that a trial of 1962 was not fair ,because we have in 2021 another opinion about it ,is nonsense .During the Roman Empire countless people were executed for crimes for which we would not execute them .That makes these executions not unfair .
This generation should admit that the past had the right on a different law system and that future generations will also have their own political and legal system .Our laws will not survive in eternity .
And : the law is not a remedy for suffering : it is about punishing those who committed crimes .It is not about forgiveness .

[mikegriffith1]

A law can not be unfair: unfair/fair have no places in a legal system. . . .

During the Roman Empire countless people were executed for crimes for which we would not execute them. That makes these executions not unfair.

I think you have a scary, bizarre concept of fairness and legality.

[ljadw]

Fairness is something totally artificial : live is not fair, thus why should the law be fair ?
And, legality is something that is changing from generation to generation .

[Terry Duncan]

I think the big problem with the Eichmann Trial is the idea you can kidnap somebody and then illegally move them from one nation to another where you then execute them. No matter how much evidence there was against Eichmann, there would always be claims the trial was biased given where it was held. Things should have been done legally, no matter what obstacles there were, and then a trial should have been held somewhere like The Hague to remove the bias accusations as much as possible.

[ljadw]

Ten years ago, US killed a man (Bin Laden ),without trial , outside the jurisdiction of the US,because he was hold responsible for the death of 3000 Americans .
Thus, why should Israel not have the right to kidnap someone who was responsible for the death of millions of Jews,and to execute him ?
There was no trial for Bin Laden in The Hague, thus why should there be one for Eichmann in the Hague ?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi terry Duncan,

So, because nobody else was seriously looking for him and he was being protected by his hosts in another country, nothing could or should have been done about Eichmann by Israel?

In practical terms, what were the viable alternatives if he was not to evade trial of any sort?

Cheers,

Sid

[gebhk]

The only thing that is important is if the trial and sentence were legal

From the mouths of babes, so to speak: that is entirely the poimt: the court itself, let alone the trial and its sentence, had no legal standing. If legality was the only thing that was important then there would be no discussion and all but the most deluded would agree that the grossest of injustrices had been done. The fact is that the legaility of the court, the trial and the sentence is probably not only NOT the most impportant thing but in fact not perticularly importnat at all to most people who consider this case.

[Terry Duncan]

Hi terry Duncan,

So, because nobody else was seriously looking for him and he was being protected by his hosts in another country, nothing could or should have been done about Eichmann by Israel?

In practical terms, what were the viable alternatives if he was not to evade trial of any sort?

Cheers,

Sid

Well, Israel did manage to kill at least a couple of people in South American nations, so it is not as though they cared too much about legality. From a legal point of view, once you are willing to ignore an entire series of laws to achieve a desired result, then why worry about other inconvenient rules? Effectively, that sanctions extra-judicial killing with no chance for a defence. If you wish to go through the process of a trial then it is important it is seen to be fair. The moment you break a rule you are calling the objectivity of the trial into doubt. The way things were done in the case of Eichmann just plays into the hands of revisionists who insist that no matter how innocent or guilty, Eichmann was never going to walk away.

[ljadw]

The only thing that is important is if the trial and sentence were legal

From the mouths of babes, so to speak: that is entirely the poimt: the court itself, let alone the trial and its sentence, had no legal standing. If legality was the only thing that was important then there would be no discussion and all but the most deluded would agree that the grossest of injustrices had been done. The fact is that the legaility of the court, the trial and the sentence is probably not only NOT the most impportant thing but in fact not perticularly importnat at all to most people who consider this case.

Why would the court,the trial and the sentence have no legal standing ?
Eichmann was accused to be responsible for the death of 6 million Jews,he was in Israel,thus he could be liable to a trial by an Israeli court ,following the Israeli law . Foreigners had no business in this trial . Only an Israeli court could nullify the trial/sentence . Not a foreign court .
If he had killed an Israeli citizen in Israel, he would also compare before an Israeli court .
After the war, officers of the SS division Das Reich compared before a French court for what they had done at Oradour . No one said that they should be judged by a non French court .

[gebhk]

Why would the court,the trial and the sentence have no legal standing ?

Because the court had no jurisdiction, pure and simple.

Eichmann was accused to be responsible for the death of 6 million Jews

But not of any Israelis. Israel did not even exist when the crimes he was accused of were committed.

he was in Israel,thus he could be liable to a trial by an Israeli court

No he wasn't, he was in Argentina, as you well know so israeli justice had no jursidiction to arrest him, let alone put him on trial. And even if he was in Israel, that still did not give the Israeli courts jurisdiction because the acts he was accused of were not committed in Israel (or even against Israeli citizens, though that is of secondary importance).

Foreigners had no business in this trial .

Indeed they did not, the foreigners in this instance being the Israelis.

Only an Israeli court could nullify the trial/sentence . Not a foreign court .

Eh?? Who nullified what sentenced?

If he had killed an Israeli citizen in Israel, he would also compare before an Israeli court .

Correct, but he hadn't.

After the war, officers of the SS division Das Reich compared before a French court for what they had done at Oradour . No one said that they should be judged by a non French court .

You now seem to be arguing against yourself. If you agree that those committing crimes against French citizens on French soil should be tried by a French court, why do you argue the opposite when it comes to Eichmann?

[Puck]

Foreigners had no business in this trial .

Indeed they did not, the foreigners in this instance being the Israelis.

Eichmann had a german defence lawyer - Robert Servatius.