Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ANTISEMITISM 41
American example, instituted procedures to try alleged Nazi war criminals
in their national courts but with disappointing results.
As of 1955, West Germany and then the reunited Federal Republic of
Germany undertook to conduct trials of Nazi perpetrators in its own courts
under Control Council Law No. 10. Total jail time imposed on Nazi perpetrators
of genocide or crimes against humanity has been miniscule. Willi
Dressen, a former German chief prosecutor at Ludwigsburg, estimated that
up to 2005 the total number of persons investigated in criminal proceedings
by German courts was 106,000, but only 6,500 defendants were tried, of
whom 166 were sentenced to prison for life. “The plain statistics,” he said,
“show therefore that the sentences imposed for murder was ten minutes
each.” 20 It is the same dismal failure of justice that a commissioner for
human rights lamented in observing that “a person stands a better chance of
being tried and judged for killing one human being than for killing
100,000.” But at least mass murder did constitute the crime of genocide,
which was an advance over the situation that Raphael Lemkin had decried:
“Why is a man punished when he kills another man? Why is the killing of a
million a lesser crime than the killing of a single individual?” 21
Adolf Eichmann was the high-ranking Nazi and SS officer who
directed the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps.
He escaped to Argentina until he was abducted in 1960 by Israeli secret
agents and tried by an Israeli court. Eichmann could not be tried under the
Genocide Convention, which prescribes an international court such as the
IMT or a court in the country where the crimes were committed, and therefore
he was indicted for crimes against humanity and war crimes under
customary international law that can be tried in the court of any nation.
Argentina protested the “violation of the sovereign rights of the Argentine
Republic” and the UN Security Council passed a resolution declaring the
abduction illegal, requiring “appropriate reparation,” but it also acknowledged
that “this resolution should in no way be interpreted as condoning the
odious crimes of which Eichmann is accused.” Sixteen states submitted
depositions for Eichmann’s defense on the grounds that his abduction violated
international law. On conviction, his appeal to the Israeli supreme
court failing and his appeal to the president for mercy was rejected, and he
20. Willi Dressen, speech at the Politische Akademie in Tutzing, Bavaria,
Akademie-Report, Nr. 3/2005, 31.
21. Raphael Lemkin, “Totally Unofficial Man?,” in Samuel Totten and Steven
Jacobs, Pioneers of Genocide Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
2002), 371. Though it may be an editor’s sharper rewording of the quotation,
Lemkin is also said to have asked, “Why is it a crime for one man to murder
another, but not for a government to kill more than a million people?”