The Labor Dispute that Nearly Halted the Eichmann Trial

The drama that had disappeared almost entirely from the official history of the Eichmann trial.

At the Eichmann trial: Yaacov Maimon speaks with a police officer in the courtroom. Also seen: Prosecutor Gideon Hausner and defense attorney Dr. Servatius

A few meters from the glass cell in which Adolph Eichmann sat in the courtroom at the People’s House in Tel Aviv, a team of shorthand stenographers labored to document what became known in the Israeli media as “the trial of the century.” The pressure imposed upon the members of the team, the many hearings and the scrambling for data that followed, took a heavy toll, almost sabotaging the course of the trial of one of the worst murderers of the Jewish people in history.

The courtroom at the People’s House during the Eichmann trial. Photo from July 12th, 1961. From the National Library’s Eichmann Trial Album

Preparations for the “Trial of the Century”

Five months before Adolph Eichmann, Head of the Jewish Department at the SS, went on trial, Police Superintendent Yitzchak Shapira invited Yaacov Maimon to his office and asked him a single question: How should the most important trial in the history of the State of Israel be documented? Maimon, inventor of the Hebrew shorthand and a veteran Aliyah activist, laid before Shapira the advantages and shortcomings of recording the trial on tape and instead recommended the deployment of a team of stenographers. During that initial conversation Maimon raised the difficulties the team of stenographers would face. First, the right stenographers would have to be found (among those whom the Knesset had yet to recruit). Second, they would have to contend with the amalgam of languages expected to be used at the trial.

At the second meeting between Shapira and Maimon, the latter was informed that his proposal had been accepted and he was asked to provide a detailed list of the equipment he would need. For the first time in his career as a stenographer, Maimon signed a multi-section contract detailing the obligations of the stenographers’ team, to be headed by Maimon himself.

During Maimon’s long career hitherto, he often had to contend with difficulties and complications stemming from the fact that his chosen field of occupation was in its infancy. In 1948, as a resident of Jerusalem under siege, he was tasked with creating a team of stenographers from scratch to document the work of the newly-formed Knesset. To meet the challenge, he started an expedited course in which he taught the tricks of the trade for 12-13 hours per day, five days a week. Fears that the course would fail due to the immense pressure proved false because, as he explained, “the work was too important.” But even that experience couldn’t prepare him for the hardships that the stenographers would face at the Eichmann trial.

Yaacov Maimon’s archive, which is kept at the National Library, provides a peek at the preparations for the start of the trial. Two documents dated February 1961 (both signed by Superintendent Shapira) approve Maimon’s request to borrow three books from the Israeli Police library: “The Final Solution,” “The Case Against Adolph Eichmann,” by Henry A. Zeiger, and “The Nuremberg Trials.” In the second document the Superintendent permits Maimon “to write notes and translations in the margins of the book’s pages.” These books (and probably others) were borrowed by Maimon for two purposes: to prepare a list of shorthand designations for approximately one hundred names and places, terms from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust era (such as various ranks in the SS and the German military) and other words in foreign languages which he anticipated being used during the trial. The second purpose was to help the stenographer team he was forming to study the dark period into which they were about to plunge – along with the millions who would follow the trial in Israel and around the world.

Receipts for the borrowed books (Hebrew)

 

Early that month several candidates were summoned for “a day of tests for typists in the Hebrew language” – with the feminine form being used, betraying the gendered perception of the profession at the time. The four stenographers chosen were Gentila Bardo, Mina Eisenberg, Miriam Yardeni and Osnat Degani – all Knesset stenographers. Also joining the team was Benzion Maimon, son of Yaacov Maimon. Later the team was supplemented by Rafi Rubinstein, Malka Glassberg and Zvi Maimon – Yaacov’s brother – after some of the stenographers felt that the emotional toll of the trial was too heavy a burden, and asked to resume their more mundane duties at the Knesset alternately with the trial work.

Summons for the typists’ exams by Shapira, detailing the hours in which the candidates would be tested to see if they suited the work they would have to do during the trial. Equipment and typewriters were provided on site.

 

Eichmann trial – summons for further training. Dated March 24th, 1961

The four stenographers, along with Maimon’s son, were summoned for training days in the month of March. During those four training days they practiced the strenuous working conditions expected in the hall where the trial would take place, memorized the shorthand notations which Maimon had prepared beforehand and coordinated their work procedures with the various interpreters. The training was held from nine in the morning to one in the afternoon, then resumed following a lengthy lunch break from three-thirty till six in the evening. The stenographers could expect to receive “full pay,” for each day of work, specifies the letter sent by Shapira to Maimon. Although he couldn’t know it at the this early stage of preparations, the many hearings of the Eichmann trial would come to equal and even surpass the long days of training.

About two weeks before the beginning of the trial, Maimon received a letter from Mr. M. F. Birnbaum, editor of “The Transcript,” the official publication of the Stenographers Association in New York City. Word of the upcoming trial had reached the distant shores of New York, (as they had almost everywhere else in the world) and aroused vast curiosity as to the technical aspects of the trial as well. Would Maimon – or anyone on his team – be interested in writing an article about the preparations for the trial?, Mr. Birnbaum inquired. Any information Maimon was willing to provide would be most welcome.

The letter that began the correspondence between the editor Birnbaum and Yaacov Maimon, dated March 30th, 1961

The option of presenting one of the lesser-discussed aspects of such an exceptionally resonant trial must have been significant to Maimon, and three days after the trial began he sent a minutely detailed reply (seven pages long) to the editor. In his archive we find the draft Maimon composed after it had been proofread by a woman who remains anonymous (“Correct it a little and tomorrow I will collect the documentation from you,” Maimon added in his own handwriting). This letter, along with another one sent later, formed the foundation of two articles which appeared in the stenographers’ journal in June and October of that year.

The letter that began the correspondence between the editor Birnbaum and Yaacov Maimon, dated March 30th, 1961

Fighting for Justice (for the stenographers crew)

Maimon’s sincere concern for the team of stenographers which he headed led him into repeated clashes with the court and the police department – the entities overseeing the work of the stenographers at the trial. In response to “errors in the minutes, announced at hearing no. 16”, Maimon sent a letter of clarification on April 28th to the lead judge on the panel, Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau. At the start of the letter Maimon stressed that “each stenographer is but human, and may err.” Any stenographer would find it difficult to produce a perfect transcript, but as in this trial “we are making a special effort to achieve perfection.” Maimon and his colleagues expressed their thanks to the presiding judge for the “great help” he was giving them by “occasionally instructing people speaking at the trial to speak clearly.” After these words of praise Maimon turned to refute the claim regarding the stenographers’ error. The word is Michaelovich, which had supposedly entered the minutes by error, did not do so due to a stenographer’s mistake. “Proof of my assumption is to be found in the following facts: The French and German transcripts, which have no connection to the Hebrew transcript” also feature this word, and therefore “it is hard to assume that four people” (the fourth being the interpreter) “sitting apart from one another, all made the same mistake and heard a name that was not spoken.” Maimon ends his letter with an interesting comment regarding the confused and excited speech of more than a few of the witnesses and Holocaust survivors at the trial, writing that “the errors we ourselves make are enough, and we should not be tasked with the slips of tongue made by others. In any event, there is no basis to assume this was a stenographer’s slip.”

“As for the errors in the minutes… if I may point out,” Letter dated April 28th, 1961

Further proof of Maimon’s devotion to his employees and his full commitment to defending their dignity and their rights is to be found in two separate letters sent on the same day (May 15th) to Major-General Yekutiel Keren. In both Maimon harks back to a hearing held ten days prior. In the first letter Maimon justifies in writing for a demand he had until then made only verbally: “to increase the pay of the stenographers to 40 Israeli Pounds for days on which two hearings are held.” The main reason Maimon gives for this irregular demand stems from the irregularity of the Eichmann trial itself: In other trials “it is customary to hold two hearings on the same day only very rarely.” “And yet here we are, five weeks into” the Eichmann trial, “and other than on Fridays, two hearings are held every single day.” In other trials, he continued, the stenographers are from time to time afforded “long breaks due to judges’ consultations,” whereas at the Eichmann trial “breaks for judges’ consultations are brief, and usually held before or after the hearing itself.” But it seems that what adversely affected the work of the stenographers the most, causing them to leave “each hearing exhausted not only that same day but into the next” was the fact that following each hearing they were forced “to scramble in search of foreign expressions and materials.”

“I hereby offer in writing the justification of the demand to increase the stenographers’ pay.” Letter dated May 15th, 1961

““The issue of continuing of canceling the stenographic transcript in Hebrew,” was at the center of the second letter, in which Maimon states that “I can no longer continue keeping the minutes under these conditions.” At this point Maimon dwells at length on the supreme effort of the trial’s stenographers team in comprehending expressions in foreign languages and in searching for documents “which sometimes have no Hebrew translation and which the prosecutor,” meaning Attorney General Gideon Hausner, “sometimes garbles expressions and names of people and places and numbers while spontaneously translating.” Added to all these issues is the unfortunate fact “that the judges forget that officially they are not supposed to know German” and they use it freely at times in a manner detrimental to the work of the stenographers. Despite all this, Maimon opposed canceling the transcription and switching to tape-recording because “errors in the material will be less frequent in the work of the stenographers, for in addition to mechanical work there is also mind work at play, and sections copied by voice recording and compared to the work of the stenographers have proven this.” He ends this letter with a stern, yet respectful reprimand: “You may decide not to accede to my demands and to switch to another form of documentation, but you cannot leave the matter hanging and reply half-heartedly or not at all to the points I have raised.”

“Re: The issue of continuing of canceling the stenographic transcript in Hebrew,” dated May 15th, 1961

Four days after these letters were sent, victory was announced. “To the honorable Mr. Maimon,” wrote the Deputy Administrator of the trial, Commander Koppel, “in response to your aforementioned letter we are pleased to inform you that although a work contract exists for all stenographers, and in fact this contract is binding upon both parties; but on the other hand, we must accept the truth of your claims, that the workload as we have experienced during days of this trial was unanticipated when these contracts were signed.” Therefore, the daily wage of the stenographers was raised to thirty-five pounds per day – rather than the forty which Maimon demanded.

“Such harassment may be another reason why one of the workers may wish to leave the job after a while, although there is no shortage of other difficulties and inconveniences.” Letter dated April 5th, 1961

The fight for a pay raise wasn’t the only campaign waged by Maimon on behalf of his workers. In a letter dated April 5th he asked the security team to refrain from “the constant searches on the workers’ persons,” as most of them were “stenographers who document meetings for the government, the IDF Chief of Staff, the Security and Foreign Relations committee and such. Places where security is just as paramount as at the trial.”

Throughout the trial, Maimon let everyone know the difficulties he and his team had to face. The professional work of Maimon and his team, despite all hardships, did not go unnoticed by the judges at the Eichmann trial. In a letter dated December 22nd, the presiding judge expressed his sincere appreciation “to you and your assistants… for your excellent work in documenting the minutes of the trial and preparing them for print.” Landau went on to wax poetically about Maimon’s skills, stating that “if not for your superb professional abilities and indefatigable dedication, this trial could not have been held as it has. I trust that you feel, as I do, that your labor has not been in vain.”

Letter of appreciation sent by Justice Moshe Landau to Yaacov Maimon, dated December 22nd, 1961

 

Maimon’s letter of thanks to the presiding judge and the panel of judges at the trial, dated January 4th, 1962

We know that this was not just empty praise, for when Eichmann appealed, Maimon was invited once again to run the stenography effort – an invitation which he accepted. Keeping faith with the professional team of stenographers he had assembled, he asked to extend the contract of three of the original team members and relieve them temporarily of their work at the Knesset.

“It is needless to say how vital they are to this work,” letter dated March 15th, 1962

Added to the praise from the presiding judge and being chosen to keep the minutes at the appeal, was a letter from Superintendent Shapira sent on behalf of the entire Eichmann Trial Administration, in which Shapira expressed “our full appreciation – for your help in recruiting the team of stenographers and typists to keep the official transcript in Hebrew and training them; for your profession, dedicated and efficient work in the ongoing management of the team, and in carrying out the more difficult portions of the transcript.”

“Upon the conclusion of the trial and the appeal…” Appreciation letter from Superintendent Yitzchak Shapira to Yaacov Maimon, dated June 14th, 1962

Despite the challenge and great interest Maimon found at the “trial of the century,” he was glad to end his part in it upon the rejection of Eichmann’s appeal. This was not so much because of the strenuous work, but because the Eichmann trial took away much of the time and energy he preferred to devote to what he saw as his life’s mission: volunteering in the absorption of new immigrants to Israel and teaching them the Hebrew language.

Yaacov Maimon and a student from the Seligsberg school teaching new immigrants Hebrew. The photo, taken in the early 1950’s, is from the book “Goodbye Dear Lina: Yaacov Maimon – The Man and His Work”




How a Man Named Saul Became King for a Day in Poland

This is the legend of how a tiny Torah was commissioned by a Jew who served as king of Poland for just one day.

The Torah scroll dedicated to Rabbi Saul Wahl

A Jewish King in Poland? An oxymoron if ever there was one. Yet, at the National Library of Israel, we have a small and rare Torah scroll, no taller than 10 centimeters, dedicated to one Saul Wahl, the crowned Jewish King of Poland- for just one day.

Saul Katzenellenbogen was born in 1541 into a well-off Jewish family from Venice. His father, Rabbi Samuel Yehuda Katzenellenbogen, was the chief rabbi of the prosperous Venetian Jewish community. After growing up and receiving his education in Italy, Saul was sent to Poland to teach in one of its prestigious yeshivot.

Saul’s religiosity did not prevent him from entering more earthly business ventures. He entered the trade business and in 1580, Saul moved to Krakow to run the salt mines of the King of Poland that were leased out to make a profit for the monarchy. Saul was extremely successful in his time in the salt mines and quickly became a close and loyal adviser to the king.

Stephen Báthory, the king to whom Saul Katzenellenbogen advised

However, this is not the whole story. How could it be? Well, when you combine the real story behind the man, and the legend of the man, the combination makes for a story so fantastic, it is almost unbelievable.

When the king of Poland died, a painful war of succession began. The holy constitution of the Kingdom of Poland determined that a new king can be coronated only after he is elected by the lords of the court – a process that must not take more than 21 days. The Polish lords sequestered themselves and tried to make sense of the process, but the deliberations went on and on and instability reigned. There was no hint of a resolution on the horizon and the deadline to crown a new king was coming due.

In order to uphold the sanctity of the constitution and to keep the kingdom from falling to anarchy, an ingenious idea was proposed: Saul Katzenellenbogen, the late king’s trusted adviser and loyal friend, would be crowned temporary king for one day. They reasoned that, because everyone knew Katzenellenbogen to be an honest man, he would not consider usurping the throne nor would he stay upon it longer than was necessary. Thus, Saul Katzenellenbogen became Saul “Wahl,” which means “The Chosen” in Polish, and he was crowned king.

As the newly minted king of Poland, Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen wasted no time. While the lords continued agonizing over the selection of a new king, King Saul put out multiple decrees aimed at improving the status of the Jews living in the Kingdom of Poland.

At the end of his first and only day as king, King Saul was asked to decide between the final two royal candidates and it was his choice that brought about the coronation of King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland.

The tiny Torah in the National Library’s collections dedicated to King Saul Wahl gives veracity to the idea that there really was a temporary Jewish King.

However, there is no true historical evidence to support this. The legend of the Jewish King of Poland comes to us from non-Jewish sources and may indeed be a fabrication, but does that truly matter?

Photos of the small Torah by Hanan Cohen, the National Library of Israel




The Red that Created a Revolution

In 1868, a German laboratory synthesized a color that changed the course of the Industrial Revolution.

Friedrich Bayer & Co. Dye Label. 1865. From the Edelstein Collection in the National Library of Israel

The year 2018 marks the 150th anniversary of the first synthesis in a laboratory of a complex, naturally occurring organic chemical product. This was the important red dye known as alizarin, obtained from the root of the madder plant. The madder red, second in importance only to indigo blue, had been used as a versatile dye for hundreds of years and is best known for its application in production of the famous Turkey red cloth. By clever application of the agents used to fix the dye to cloth, various shades and hues could be achieved from the same dye.

Eduard Lauber, Praktisches Handbuch des Zeugdrucks, Moscow, 1887. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

The chemical synthesis of alizarin was achieved in early 1868 by Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann (a relative of the artist Max Liebermann), who were research assistants of the chemist Adolf Baeyer. The significance of this achievement lay in the tremendous industrial importance of the natural dye, which was often applied using high-speed printing machines that colored millions of yards of cloth. As an outcome of the synthesis, alizarin was manufactured on vast scales in Britain and Germany, which in a flash, almost wiped out much of the cultivation and trade in the natural dye. This success was the main stimulus for the emergence of the synthetic dye industry, which transformed coal tar waste into alizarin and a myriad of other colored textile dyes. The early dyes were based on the chemical known as aniline, which gave its name to the industry.

Carl Theodore Liebermann, 1868

Theodore Herzl was so impressed that, in 1896, he was inspired to write a short story, ‘The Aniline Inn’, in which, just like the transformation, or processing, of waste tar into ‘beautiful radiant colors’, the oppressed Jewish peoples could turn their despair into highly colorful achievement. This ‘refuse of human society’ was then waiting to be processed and given purpose in the Jewish State.

The synthesis of alizarin stimulated scientific studies into the chemical constitutions and molecular structures of both natural products such as alizarin and indigo, and others without analogous colors in nature. In 1868, only a partial structure could be drawn for alizarin. Six years later, the modern structure of alizarin was published by Adolf Baeyer and the industrial chemist Heinrich Caro at BASF, a chemical company based in Ludwigshafen.

This advance drew on, and in many ways reinforced, the acceptance of Kekulé’s famous six membered benzene ring of 1865. It also led to scientific studies into all novel colorants, such that within a few years it was possible to create color by design. This was a high point of the second industrial revolution, based on chemical industry and electricity. Synthetic dyes represented the very first high-tech science-based industry.

Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik, Anilinfarben auf Halbwolle, Ludwigshafen, 1910. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

By the close of the 19th century, Germany practically dominated the industry of making synthetic dyes. This success relied on the opening of dedicated research laboratories, and collaborations between industry and technical institutes. In 1897, two German firms, BASF and Hoechst, commenced the manufacture of synthetic indigo, which within a few years displaced the blue natural product imported into Europe from India.

This revolution in the production of textile dyes, which began with synthetic alizarin, and its implications for global industries and economies, as well as for progress in science and technology, is recorded in the magnificent collection of books, pamphlets, recipes and archival documents gathered together by Sidney M. Edelstein. Today these documents are held with the Sidney M. Edelstein Library for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the National Library of Israel.




Philip Roth: Life in the Shadow of Portnoy

After publishing “Portnoy’s Complaint,” Roth found himself fielding accusations of anti-Semitism from Jewish leaders across the globe - and even from his own mother.

“She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.”

― Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint

Philip Roth wrote several books before publishing his novel, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” which hit the book stores in 1969. The book became a fast best-seller and a source of controversy that haunted Roth throughout his career and life as a novelist.

A polarizing and confrontational book, “Portnoy’s Complaint” brought to the forefront the inner machinations of the mind of a character portraying the direct opposite of the idealized Jew in America. Roth wrote the novel voiced as a stream of consciousness that many considered obscene to the point of being worthy of censorship. Indeed, for many years, “Portnoy’s Complaint” was banned in many public libraries due to the use of unpolished language and an explicit description of masturbation.

The convention of framing the story as a psychoanalytical session, the sexually explicit nature of the book, along with the main character’s, Alexander Portnoy, neurosis seemed to feed the worst stereotypes held of Jews after the Second World War, a representation that caused an outcry in American and Israeli public discourse.

The great Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah researcher, Gershom Scholem, was so incensed by the book that he wrote a scathing and contemptuous review and sent it out across the world.

[Content Warning: The text below contains language that may be inappropriate for young audiences]

Gershom Scholem’s scathing review of Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint,” found in the Gershom Scholem Collection at the National Library of Israel

“Let the pollyannas not tell us that here we have satire, although it may that into the hearts of those who say this some doubts about the work may already have crept. The hero of a best-seller, which is being grabbed avidly by the public, proclaims as the basic motto of his whole life (and lives his proclamation) that his behavior is shaped by but one lust: to get ‘shikse c**t.’

…And all of this in order to square accounts with that demonic figure, the Yiddishe Mame, who had not been told all that she deserved until this author came along and ‘artistic’ release to his secret drives. This hero is no longer some miserable individual writing in his lust; he is the Jew taking vengeance of his upbringing in the Jewish home, which has become detestable to him, and going forth to lay shikses, thereby freeing himself from his nightmare of mame.

This is the book for which all anti-Semites have been praying. I daresay that with the next turn of history, which surely will not be long delayed, this book will make all of us defendants at court.”

Scholem was part of a vocal contingent of Jewish readers and critics who would continue to call Philip Roth “self-hating” and an “anti-Semite” for the ways in which he portrayed Jews in his fiction. Philip Roth actively engaged with the storm of criticism more than once and was very self-aware of his position as an American Jew and as an author of Jewish characters in America.

“Reading Myself and Others,” by Philip Roth, Jonathan Cape LTD, 1961

In “Reading Myself and Others,” Roth responded directly to the sort of criticism that Scholem pitched at him in the interview, “On Portnoy’s Complaint (1974),” where he was asked by George Plimpton about the accusations of anti-Semitism:

“… I have always been far more pleased by my good fortune in being born a Jew than my critics may begin to imagine. It’s a complicated, interesting, morally demanding, and very singular experience and I like that. I find myself in the historic predicament of being Jewish, with all its implications. Who could ask for more? But as for those charges you mention- yes they probably will be leveled at me. Because of the U.N. condemnation of Israeli ‘aggression,’ and the anti-Semitic rage flaring up in the black community, many American Jews must surely be feeling more alienated than they have in a lone time; consequently, I don’t think it’s a moment when I can expect a book as unrestrained as this one to indulged or even tolerated, especially in those quarters where I was not exactly hailed as the Messiah to begin with.”

Though it was “Portnoy’s Complaint” that skyrocketed Roth into literary stardom, his other books and stories like “Goodbye, Columbus,” only gave fodder to the rabbis who charged him with the aforementioned “self-hatred.” In his essay, “On Writing Jews,” published in 1963, Roth explained:

“Among the letters I receive from readers. There have been a number written by Jews accusing me of being anti-Semitic and “self-hating,” or at least tasteless…

Furthermore, it is charged that such criticism as I make of Jews- or apparent criticism- is taken by anti-Semites as justification of their attitudes, as ‘fuel’ for their fires, particularly as it is a Jew himself who seemingly admits to habits and behavior that not exemplary, or even normal and acceptable. When I speak before Jewish audiences, invariably there have been people who have come up to me afterward to ask, “Why don’t you leave us alone? Why don’t you write about the Gentiles? – ‘Why must you be so critical?’ – ‘Why do you disapprove of us so? …’

It is difficult, if not impossible, to explain to some of the people claiming to have felt my teeth sinking in that in many instance they haven’t been bitten at all. Not always, but frequently, what readers have taken to be my disapproval of their lives lived by Jews seems to have to do more with their own moral perspective than with the one they would ascribe to me: at times they see wickedness where I myself had seen energy or courage or spontaneity; they are ashamed of what I see no reason to be ashamed of, and defensive where there is no cause for defense.”

“Portnoy’s Complaint,” cover by Lowe and Brydone Limited, London, 1969

It is not with a little irony that Roth’s own mother questioned his position:

“My mother did say to me at one point, ‘Philip, are you anti-Semitic?’ And so I said, ‘Ma, what do you think? You’ve known me since kindergarten and before.’ But they were getting that from the Rabbi, you know?”

Philip Roth, through his fictional works, never stopped exploring his complicated existence as an American Jew in an America in which he happened to be Jewish. His characters beyond Alexander Portnoy, including Nathan Zukerman and his own fictional alter-ego, Philip Roth, made up a collection of unforgettable stories that influenced the literary world far beyond the scope of Jewish-American writing.

Philip Roth died on May 22, 2018 at the age of 85.