EMET_PRIZE_2017

PROSECUTOR GABRIEL BACH speaks at Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem in 1981. (Wikimedia Commons)
one meter from him, it was very
hard to stay calm.”
Next, Bach recalls the German
government’s “efficiency in sending
every file from every ministry
and army unit – millions of
documents. I split it all up among
the police and assigned officers so
everyone was looking at different
documents.”
Coming into contact with Eichmann
the human and his case
files, he says he “kept dreaming
that maybe Eichmann would sometimes
let Jews go in unique circumstances.
But every single time he
had them killed,” no matter what
the special nature of the request
was.
Giving the example of a professor
who lived in Paris who owned and
had knowledge related to patents
for radar technology that the German
army wanted to question the
professor about, a German general
asked Eichmann whether the professor
and his wife could be spared
due to their usefulness.
Eichmann said “no,” says Bach.
Describing the exchange, Bach
says the general wrote, “I am the
general of a large portion of the
army” and that he wanted the Jewish
professor spared. Eichmann
responded, “I am a commander in
the SS and I don’t care what your
rank is. The German army already
took the patents. Not even a oneday
extension can be granted.”
Bach says Eichmann won, like
countless other times, and sent the
Jewish professor to his death.
During the Eichmann trial,
Bach remembers that an American
woman traveled to Israel,
approached him and said that she
was the daughter of that professor,
that her parents had sent her
to non-Jewish neighbors and she
eventually got to the US.
“I read in the US about your case
with my parents’ names. I didn’t
know them and do not even have
a picture of them – can you help?”
In a quirk of history, Bach, Eichmann’s
prosecutor, later became
Nazi guard Ivan Demjanjuk’s savior
and releaser when he led a 1993
three-justice panel of the Supreme
Court to order Demjanjuk’s release
due to mistaken identity evidentiary
issues.
Though originally convicted by
a lower Israeli court as a Nazi guard
at the Treblinka death camp, the
Supreme Court under Bach said
that none of the witnesses could
identify him as that guard. Also,
the new evidence that was a different
Nazi guard named Ivan at
the death camps of Sobibor and
Majdanek could not be presented
when he had not had a chance to
defend against that evidence in the
lower court trial.
Bach says he had no second
thoughts about that decision even
after significant domestic criticism.
In fact, Bach states that the decision
impressed most of the world as
to Israel’s court system’s independence
and capability for justice over
just getting emotional revenge.
The former justice did say he also
got some satisfaction knowing that
decades later, in 2011, Demjanjuk
was convicted of being the Nazi
guard at Sobibor and Majdanek,
shortly before dying of old age.
Between Bach’s achievements
and the achievements of Emet Prize
winner picked by Bach, Israel has
much to be proud of.
The Jerusalem
Report
May 2017
13