Eichmann on the Air: Radio and the Making of a Historic Trial

the fact but nevertheless believes that the trial would leave its
mark on historical consciousness. Unlike Asch, who speaks as a
professional historian, the next speaker Eliyahu Jonas is a survivor
and a witness. For him, the trial carries the essential undertaking
of changing the attitudes of Israelis towards the survivors. “The
most painful thing for someone like me,” he says,” “is the fact that
even in Israel I haven’t found the right approach, the warmth or the
understanding, needed for what I have gone through, neither by
the schoolteacher, nor by the Hebrew press and other public
organizations.” He then states that the history of the Shoah should
be taught in schools at least as much as other topics in ancient
history. This statement is a clear indication to the widespread
repression of the Holocaust in the years before the trail.
Expressing his disconcert with some of the replies given by
interviews on the street, the anchor asks the panelists what kind of
public reaction the trial should raise, whether pity for the victims or
maybe the lesson of never be weak again. Jonas’s answer is
certainly not pity but a thorough understanding of the conditions
that gave rise to Nazism, adding that “only then there would be a
relation to the survivors. There must be understanding in order for
it to be a relation." Historian Asch agrees and adds that what is
presently known is mostly a-historical knowledge, the “end points,
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