Justice Gavriel Bach relives his prosecution of Adolf Eichmann
It was May of 1960, and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion has just made the shocking announcement that Nazi arch-criminal Adolf Eichmann had been captured by the Mossad and brought to Israel for trial. Days later, a young jurist named Gavriel Bach was given an assignment that would forever change his life.
Bach was a lawyer in the State Prosecutor’s office when the chief architect of Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” to exterminate Europe’s Jews was seized by Israeli secret agents in Argentina. And a year later 60 years ago this month as the Eichmann trial got underway and Israelis finally confronted the enormity of the atrocities buried deep in survivors’ souls for over 15 years, it was Gavriel Bach who took center stage.