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Thinking Truth, Memory and Film Editing Following the Eichmann Trial Filmed Archive / UCLA 2009

On Feb. 22-23, 2009, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies hosted an international conference exploring the impact of film, radio and television broadcasts of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Videos of selected presentations are available below. An edited volume based on the conference proceedings is forthcoming.

Historians, literary critics, legal scholars, and filmmakers agree on the importance of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking Nazi official charged with the logistics of mass deportation to the death camps. Kidnapped from Argentina by Israeli agents in 1960, Eichmann was indicted on charges of crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people in the Jerusalem District Court. His trial lasted from April 11 to Aug. 14, 1961. One hundred eleven witnesses testified in the case. Eichmann was found guilty and hanged on June 1, 1962.

The Eichmann trial is important for many reasons. It was the first transnational narrative to construct the genocide of the Jews as a distinct event of World War II, and it marked the foregrounding of victims as witnesses who produce historical accounts.

Watch Eyal Sivan's talk