THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

of whom only one was a non-Jew, a great deal of trust would have been added toour relations with Europe.Another point about the trial is that it would have been better if the charges and thepublic debate had focused not only on atrocities but also the inner meaning ofcriminal Nazism: the attempt to annihilate Jewish culture and sterilize world culturefrom its Jewish influence. Perhaps even more: the presumptuousness to cleanse theJewish relative, undoubtedly an important member, from the family of nations, and theattempt to force Darwinian behavior on humanity.When Israel decided to turn the Eichmann trial into a founding experience, it shouldnot have been limited to the few years of the Shoah and annihilation. If it were tobecome a historical trial, then witnesses should have been called to testify on therelations between Europe and the Jewish people during the Jewish Millennium. True,this was also a millennium of hatred, pogroms, and crusades, but not only enmityexisted. During these centuries the scattered Jews fertilized Europe with theirphilosophy, trade, poetry, debates. Without us, the Jews, the European history ofhumanism, liberty, philosophy, and other accomplishments cannot be fully understood.It is common knowledge that a common denominator unites all the players in thecourtroom: prosecutors and prosecuted, witnesses and spectators, anyone who isthrown into the emotionally charged spiral of events has no choice in the matter. Thejudges who presided over the trial were partners to both us and Eichmann. The trialwas the climax of a series of trials on Shoah affairs, in which Kapos and other Nazicollaborators were prosecuted. Israeli society aspired to cleanse itself, through thejustice system, of the ungodliness that had infected us, the citizens of the ashenJewish planet. About forty trials took place under the Law of Punishment of theNazis and Their Collaborators. Three of the defendants were nonJews, of themone, Damjanjuk, was acquitted; all the other defendants were Jews—Nazicollaborators who had betrayed their own people and worked for the Germans.From a society that aspired to realize the dreams of its founders to a persecuted andsanctimonious nation that is easily frightened, vengeful and coercive. The selfconfidentfounding generation succumbed to the survivors. But the process hadstarted several years earlier, during the Kastner trial.