The Trial of Adolf Eichmann – Participants, Then & Now

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Hoter-Yishai, Aharon
Witness to the liberation of the camps as a member of the second battalion of the Jewish Brigade in the British Eighth Army


Photo 1961: Hoter-Yishai, Aharon1961 Quote: 6/12/61: HOTER-YISHAI: It was impossible to obtain a list from the camp commandants, it was impossible to get to them then, it was impossible to know where they were to be found. In order to reach them, it was necessary to concentrate them in national camps, as a Jewish camp, something which was, of course, objected to by the directors of all camps which were run on national blocks, by national officers, and also the camp management; and I believe that no other force in the world would have been able to get to them or-more correctly-to provide them with the spiritual and physical strength to get them out of these blocks and to concentrate them in one place, other than a Jewish Force, which gave them the impression, as if the entire Yishuv [Jewish community of Palestine] had appeared there and had brought them the power, as well as the authority and had also provided them with the miracle. However miraculous these happenings might seem to me today, it was sufficient to take a sheet and paint a Shield of David on it with ink and, after attaching it to a broomstick, to give it to two to three hundred persons-each of whom looked like a skeleton-and then they would feel themselves linked suddenly to a certain center, and they had the strength to congregate and to refuse to allow the officers of the country to which they had previously belonged, in whose block they had previously been-to refuse to allow them to take them out of there.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GIDEON HAUSNER: And that was how you took them out of their anonymity, is that so?

HOTER-YISHAI: That was the way we gathered them together. To take them out of their anonymity was a much more difficult task.


Photo 1996: Hoter-Yishai, Aharon1996 Quote: Since the Eichmann trial I have read my testimony in it’s entirety and I have found it so pale, without color, without fire, without giving the least expression of what I had in my heart to say. I was not satisfied with my testimony, and yet I’m sure I could never be satisfied, because it is impossible for anyone to truly describe what happened during the Holocaust.


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