Return to the Introduction: The Trial of AdolfEichmann In 1961,
the world watched the first televised courtroom trial as a
Jerusalemcourt tried Nazi SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann
for crimes against theJewish people. Eichmann's role in
deporting the Jews of Europe to concentrationcamps made him the
target of a fifteen-year manhunt by Israeli agents. Hisdefense,
like that of other Nazis, was that he was "just
followingorders." Eichmann's trial was the first televised trial
in the history of television. Israel's Prime Minister David Ben
Gurion wanted to broadcast the trial to educatea generation that
had come of age after World War II about the atrocities of
theHolocaust. The trial was an emotionally explosive event that
revealed for thefirst time to a shocked world audience the Nazi
campaign to exterminate EuropeanJewry. Eichmann's name first
surfaced during the Nuremberg Trial. In 1950 he fled toArgentina
with the help of the Nazi underground. The Israeli government
foundhim living in Buenos Aires with