Prosecutor in Israel’s Trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann Dies
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by i24 News
Former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Gabriel Bach. Photographer: Israel Press and Photo Agency (I.P.P.A.) / Dan Hadani collection, National Library of Israel / CC BY 4.0
i24 News – Gabriel Bach, who as a young Israeli state attorney helped prosecute Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, was buried Sunday following his death at age 94.
Bach, who also served as a judge on Israel’s top court, was eulogized by Supreme Court president Esther Hayut as “one of the great jurists” in the nation’s history, according to a copy of her remarks released by the court.
Bach was Israel’s deputy state attorney in 1960 when the world learned that a key architect of Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” to exterminate Europe’s Jews was seized by Israeli secret agents.
Bach received a call from Israel’s then-justice minister Pinchas Rosen requesting that the prosecutor lead the investigation days after Eichmann was taken on May 11 by a Mossad team in Argentina.
At the trial, which opened in April 1961, attorney general Gideon Hausner was lead prosecutor, with Bach as his deputy.
But it was Bach who led the months-long pretrial investigation, relocating from Jerusalem to northern Israel, where an entire prison was cleared for Eichmann’s detention.
At the prison, renamed Camp Iyar, Bach coordinated a team of some 40 police officers who interrogated and compiled evidence against Eichmann.
Bach said he remained haunted by the man who was so committed to his genocidal cause that he reportedly chastised fellow Nazis who wavered when forcing Jewish children into gas chambers.
“Not a day passes without me remembering some particular item, or some particular piece of evidence, or some particular moment from the Eichmann trial,” said Bach.
Bach became a judge on Israel’s Supreme Court in 1982 and served 15 years before retiring.
