The Trial of Adolf Eichmann – Participants, Then & Now

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Rosenberg, Eliahu
Witness to conditions in the Treblinka concentration camp, Poland


Photo 1961: Rosenberg, Eliahu1961 Quote: 6/6/61: ATTORNEY GENERAL GIDEON HAUSNER: Please be good enough to approach the picture. You say that this is the Treblinka camp. Which way did they take you to the camouflaged gate? Will you please point to it?

ROSENBERG: (Pointing) The gate was here, at this place, camouflaged with pine branches. We reached this point. When they opened the gate, we went in, here. All of us were automatically in a state of shock, for we saw a pile of corpses. And the German Mattias began shouting to this group – “An die tragen” – “To the stretchers!” We did not understand what was going on. We began running around the bodies. The Germans and the Ukrainians who were present there hit us. We did not know what we were supposed to do. The Jews who worked on removing the bodies said to us: “Take hold of the stretchers and put a body on each.” We seized a stretcher, another person and I, I don’t know what his name was, we went up to this pile, and we took a body away on a stretcher. We walked to the graves at this spot – 150 to 200 meters to the grave, and we threw the bodies down below.


Photo 1996: Rosenberg, Eliahu1996 Quote: When I entered the courtroom and entered the witness-stand, only after I received the first questions from Gideon Hausner and from the Judges did I look into Eichmann’s face. I thought to myself, here I have the privilege, to fulfill the wish of the victims to tell the world what had happened in Treblinka, and here I stand opposite one of the greatest criminals and I am going to testify against him.


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