Prosecutor in Israeli trial of Nazi Eichmann dies

Agence France-Presse

Feb 20, 2022

(FILES) This file photo taken on May 1, 2020, shows Gabriel Bach, a former deputy prosecutor during the trial of top Nazi German official Adolf Eichmann, speaking during an interview in the yard of his home in Jerusalem — MENAHEM KAHANA

Gabriel Bach, who as a young Israeli state attorney helped prosecute Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, was buried Sunday following his death at the weekend, aged 94.

Bach, who also served as a judge on Israel's top court, was eulogised by Supreme Court president Esther Hayut as "one of the great jurists" in the nation's history, according to a copy of her remarks released by the court.

The judicial authority had earlier confirmed Bach's death in a statement, without giving the cause.

Bach was Israel's deputy state attorney in 1960 when the world learned that a key architect of Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution" to exterminate Europe's Jews had been seized by Israeli secret agents.

Days after Eichmann was snatched on May 11 by a Mossad team in Argentina, where he had been living under an assumed name, the Germany-born Bach received a call from Israeli justice minister Pinchas Rosen.

In a 2020 interview with AFP, Bach recalled what Rosen asked.

"He said: 'Mr. Bach, I imagine that you will be one of the prosecutors in the case, but I have a request to make. I would like you to be in charge of the whole investigation against Eichmann'," Bach recounted.

At the trial, which opened in April 1961, attorney general Gideon Hausner was lead prosecutor, with Bach as his deputy.

But it was Bach who led the months-long pretrial investigation, relocating from Jerusalem to northern Israel, where an entire prison had been cleared for Eichmann's detention.

At the prison, renamed Camp Iyar, Bach coordinated a team of some 40 police officers who interrogated and compiled evidence against Eichmann.

Bach said he remained haunted by the man who was so committed to his genocidal cause that he reportedly chastised fellow Nazis who wavered when forcing Jewish children into gas chambers.

"Not a day passes without me remembering some particular item, or some particular piece of evidence, or some particular moment from the Eichmann trial," said Bach.

Bach had grown up in Berlin, but his family fled in 1938, shortly after the area where his Zionist school was located had been renamed Adolf Hitler Square.

The family ultimately settled in British-mandate Palestine.

Bach became a judge on Israel's Supreme Court in 1982 and served 15 years before retiring.