Representing the Eichmann Trial 10 years of controversy around The Specialist
By Rebecka Thor
M.A. Thesis for Liberal Studies, The New School for Social Research in New York.
Advisor: Andreas Kalyvas, Assistant Professor of Political Science, The New School
for Social Research in New York
Reader: Juliane Rebentisch, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. A special thanks to Eyal Sivan.




Contents:
1. Disruptive Narratives.............................................................................................3
2. The Trial of Adolf Eichmann...................................................................................8
3. The Making and Archiving of the Material..............................................................12
4. Responsibilities towards the Archive and Representations of Documentary Images...16
5. To Show Instead of Telling...................................................................................32
6. Consequences of Representation..........................................................................49
7. Bibliography........................................................................................................67
8. Filmography........................................................................................................72
9. Appendix: Interview with Eyal Sivan.....................................................................73

1. Disruptive Narratives

“Butcher, butcher!”
The words are heard before we see the man shouting. The film cuts to the

audience; two guards drag their struggling charge out of the courtroom by his arms. A buzz spreads through the audience, all are turned towards him, one of the judges calls for order, and cut – the moment is over and a new scene begins. These few seconds in the very beginning of film The Specialist: Portrait of a Modern Criminal, directed by Eyal Sivan and released in 1999, exemplify the controversy that has followed the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem 1961. The trial itself has become emblematic for various reasons: it was the only time Israel convicted a somewhat high-ranking Nazi; it was the first time survivors publicly testified; the entire trial was videotaped and broadcast on both television and radio around the world. The aftermath, too, has been marked by much contentiousness. Two years after the trial, Hannah Arendt published an account of it in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil, and in so doing forever damaged her relationship to the international community of Jews in exile and posed her as the controversial thinker she would be known as.

The historical backdrop of Arendt’s book is necessary for understanding the issues at the core of the discussions of The Specialist. The film’s main critic, Hillel Tryster, the former director of the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive – the archive responsible for the filmed trial material – refers to the historian and scholar of Shoah, Yehuda Bauer, and claims that Bauer suggested that a film based upon Arendt’s book “cannot be worthy of analysis.”1 Such harsh judgment upon both the film and the book, suggests just how complicated these discussions are. Hillel Tryster believes, however, that the film merits attention for two reasons: first, since it has gained such public recognition and second, since it provides a rare type of case study since most of the material comes from the same archival source.2 However, as we will see, there seems to be more than this at stake in his criticism.