The Trial of Adolf Eichmann – Participants, Then & Now

Go back to The Eichmann Trial: Participants, Then & Now

(Click on thumbnail photo image to see full-size photo)

Ben-Zvi, Gedalya
Witness to conditions in the Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland


Photo 1961: Ben-Zvi, Gedalya1961 Quote: 6/8/61: ATTORNEY GENERAL GIDEON HAUSNER: Did you know that gas was used to kill people?

BEN-ZVI: Yes, we knew, and we even saw how. Later, we got to know that this place where we worked, this famous “Canada,” also served as one of the storerooms–although not the main storeroom-for that gas. How did we know that? Before an operation, before we knew that a transport was due-we knew that from the fact that we saw the commandant of crematorium No. 2, Moll, coming on his motor cycle into our Kommando, into this courtyard which was specially fenced off, and he was followed by a Red Cross vehicle, an ambulance.

HAUSNER: The German Red Cross?

BEN-ZVI: Yes, a German Red Cross which, in theory, in time of war, belonged to the International Red Cross. And into this truck the tins of Zyklon B were loaded and transferred to the gas chambers.

HAUSNER: In a truck of the Red Cross?

BEN-ZVI: Yes, in a truck of the Red Cross which was always on hand with each transport.


Photo 1996: Ben-Zvi, Gedalya1996 Quote: The trial of Adolf Eichmann succeeded in bringing the Holocaust to the attention of the world, but the closest thing that I am thinking however, when I am writing or I am thinking about the Holocaust, is my personal day to day experience, and not the whole work like it was expressed in the trial. I remember it as a young boy of16 years old, coming from a well to do house, and entering into Hell. When I think of it today, I think of my survival as a riddle. It is a riddle for everybody, and not only for me, because you could be strong and clever and you didn’t survive. You could be weak and poor in thinking and still you survived. It’s very hard to explain.


Go to the top of the page

PBS Online