The State Archives in Israel has created a unique searchable database for the records of Adolf Eichmann’s trial for Holocaust Memorial Day.
More than 380,000 pages of rare historical material has been digitised and will now be freely available to the public.
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Eichmann, often labelled the architect of the Holocaust, was key in the devising and implementation of the so-called Final Solution policy which saw six million Jews murdered in Nazi death camps.
He was responsible for the organisation of mass deportations to the camps, compiling detailed list of Jews in each region of occupied Europe and scheduling the infamous trains that took them to the gas chambers.
Following the war, he escaped to Argentina until he was apprehended in a high-profile capture mission carried out by Shin Bet operatives.
Eichmann was one of the principle architects of the Holocaust (Image: Wikimedia)[Missing Credit]
Eichmann was taken to Israel in 1961 for a highly-publicised trial – one of the first to be widely televised.
Now, the Israeli government is making the documents related to the trial available to the public to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The pages uploaded to an advanced search engine include testimony, lists, photographs, court files, and correspondence between the State Attorney's Office and then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
Israeli police compiled the "Bureau 06" materials, which are named after the team formed to investigate and prepare the charges against Eichmann.
The 1961 trial was publicised heavily around the world[Missing Credit]
Among the materials is the testimony of Holocaust survivor Yehiel De-Nur, who collapsed during the trial and could not testify in court but recounted the horrors of Auschwitz and his chilling encounter with Eichmann to the police.
De-Nur described his horrific transport to the Nazi concentration camp in Poland, the deadly selections, and his haunting encounter with Eichmann, whose gaze he described as "hypnotic and terrifying," comparing it to looking through "the eyeholes of the death's-head [symbol] on his cap."
The collection is accessible online via the Israel State Archive website, along with a video link to De-Nur’s courtroom collapse.
Eichmann was hanged in prison in June 1962 (Image: Getty)Getty Images
Eichmann was ultimately convicted of charges including crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against the Jewish people.
He was hanged at a prison in Ramla on 1 June 1962, with his body cremated and his ashes scattered at sea outside of Israeli waters.
