Today (Monday January 27th) on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Israel State Archives is making one of its most powerful collection of Holocaust documentations available for public viewing. By utilizing a new advanced search tool, they’ve enabled quick access to materials from the Eichmann trial on the Israel State Archives website. Additionally, they have publicly published a distressing testimony which failed to be delivered in court during the 1961 Eichmann trial.
380,000 Pages of Harrowing Testimonies
According to the Israel State Archives, the majority of the documentations has been previously unveiled, but is newly available for independent investigation. One of the collections contains the records of “Bureau 06”, which had been compiled by the Israeli police in preparation for Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Israel in 1961. The contents include court files, correspondence from the prosecution, letters from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, and 380,000 pages of chilling testimonies, correspondence, lists, and photographs.
The archives been digitized and equipped with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) layers, enabling advanced searches by keywords, names, locations, events, and dates, as well as facilitating translation through automated tools.
“The examination of the documents using this tool is a significant breakthrough in making archival historical material accessible to the general public,” said an Archives personnel. “Additionally, the new method allows families of Holocaust survivors to search for and discover personal stories of their loved ones, sometimes in their own handwriting.”
The Testimony That Never Made it to the Witness Stand
Among the documents is the full testimony of Yehiel De-Nur (K. Tzetnik). De-Nur collapsed as he took the stand during the Eichmann trial, and remained unable to deliver his testimony in court. However, as he gave his testimony to a police officer, K. Tzetnik recounted the horrifying days in Auschwitz and his bone-chilling encounter with Eichmann.
“We Knew We Were Being Led to Our Deaths”
Regarding his arrival at Auschwitz, K. Tzetnik testified (pp. 2–3): “I also saw Gestapo officer Dreyer, who was in charge of extermination operations. He was present mainly during the transportation of people from assembly points to the train station… We were shoved into a wagon with beatings and gunfire. Inside, we were packed so tightly that we could not breathe. People lay both underfoot and overhead.”
“I knew we were being led to Auschwitz… We knew we were being led to our deaths, but we did not know what form the death called Auschwitz would take. The distance to Auschwitz was relatively short—about 40 kilometers—and when we arrived at the Auschwitz station, half the wagon’s occupants were lifeless. If we had continued another half hour under those conditions, no one would have survived.”
“We passed by a group of SS soldiers conducting a selection process. One of them pointed to each person, indicating where they should go. Those directed to the right were loaded onto trucks and, as I later learned, sent straight to their deaths. Those directed to the left, including myself, were lined up and at the end of the selection process, led at nightfall towards Birkenau.”
“From a distance, I saw a tall chimney emitting thick smoke with sparks of fire. There had been rumors in the ghetto that in Auschwitz people were gassed and burned. Although we found this hard to believe, the information was known. When I saw the chimney from afar and realized we were walking toward it, it became clear to me that this was our final march toward death. Yet the spark of life in each of us would not allow us to fully accept this reality.”
“It Was Then That I First Heard the Name Adolf Eichmann”
Regarding his encounter with Eichmann, K. Tzetnik testified (pp. 7–8): “I stood at the gate facing the ‘Zentrale’ building. Suddenly, the SS officer who had torn up my papers at Dreyer’s office emerged. The clerks outside the building, avoiding the ‘Zentrale’ during the Sonderkommando’s visit, pointed to him and said, ‘That is Eichmann.'”
“Eichmann left the building with Dreyer and several local Gestapo officers known to the ghetto’s residents. A few days later, in a conversation with one of them, I was told that the foreign Gestapo officer visiting the ‘Zentrale’ with Dreyer was Adolf Eichmann.”
“It is worth noting that, during my time with Dreyer, what struck me most was his gaze—a penetrating, hypnotic, and horrifying stare. Looking into his face, I saw only his eyes. That gaze is etched into my memory. It seemed as though he was staring at me through the skull holes of the death’s-head emblem on his hat.”
Watch K. Tzetnik Collapse During the Trial (Turn on English Subs in Settings):
Eichmann was Jew and it shows