President Shimon Peres: ‘What would remain of the world if Hitler had acquired the atomic bomb?’
IDF Chief Of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi: ‘And the Americans today do not know about Iran’s atomic bomb?’
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: ‘There will never be another Holocaust’
The Jewish state is marking this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day against the backdrop of Iran’s repeated threats to wipe Israel off the map as Tehran steps up its drive to acquire nuclear weapons. At the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, IDF Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi Israel compared the Allies refusal to bomb the gas chambers during World War II and the situation today. In Jerusalem, President Shimon Peres asked rhetorically: ‘What would remain of the world if Hitler had acquired the atomic bomb’ while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared: ‘There will never be another Holocaust!’ Today we return to a defining moment in Israel’s quest to bring Nazi war criminals to justice – IsraCast presents a riveting interview with the late Gideon Hausner, the chief prosecutor of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem.
(Photo: IDF)
‘I have come as the chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces on Holocaust Day and on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day to tell the world: Never again! Never again will Jews gaze in terror from behind the barbed wire. We have come to remember and never forget and to tell them and their memory: Never again! ‘That was the message General Ashkenazi wrote in the visitors’ book after touring Auschwitz.
The IDF Chief of Staff was then asked the question about why in World War II, after being informed of the Nazis extermination of Jews, the Americans did not bomb the gas chambers at Auschwitz. He replied: ‘Then they knew about the Holocaust – today they don’t know about the Iranian nuclear bomb?’
At the main Holocaust ceremony on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl, President Shimon Peres asked: ‘What would have remained of the world if Hitler had acquired the atomic bomb? ‘In Washington, former defense minister Shaul Mofaz was discussing the Iranian nuclear weapons program with American officials. Cabinet minister Mofaz warned: Iran may cross the technological threshold to building the bomb in the coming year. Iran is making continual progress in its nuclear program that can develop a more efficient uranium enrichment capability and thereby acquire the technology for producing the bomb’.
Listen to interview with the late Gideon Hausner, the chief prosecutor of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann
In this place where I stand before you, judges of Israel, to prosecute Adolph Eichmann, I do not stand alone. Standing with me at this hour are six million prosecutors. But they cannot stand up to point an accusing finger at the glass cell and to shout at the man sitting there – I accuse! Because their ashes are piled on the mounds at Auschwitz, spread over the fields of Treblinka and washed away in the rivers of Poland. Their graves are dispersed throughout the width and breadth of Europe. Their blood cries out but their voices cannot be heard. Therefore, I shall be their voice and in their name I shall present the terrible indictment.
Chief Prosecutor Gideon Hausner at the opening of the Eichmann trial. Eichmann was found guilty on fifteen counts of genocide and executed. Three years later, Gideon Hausner wrote a book about the trial and its implications – he chose the title, ‘Justice in Jerusalem’. In a radio interview, he talked at length starting first with the Holocaust victims who had testified at the trial.
Video – Eichmann Trial
