The One Before Eichmann

Adolf Eichmann is in the news again. Der Spiegel says that newly available records give a new story of his life in hiding, and tell of an Israeli effort to capture him when Israel itself was a brand spankin' new nation, in 1949.

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=203881

(My apologies -- I've had trouble getting that URL to work as a link -- just copy and paste it into your browser if you like!)

Some related surfing tells me that before the Eichmann case, Israel had only tried one WW II war criminal. That was Rezso Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew who, Israel alleged, had collaborated with Eichmann in the destruction of the Jews of that country.

According to Neal Bascomb, author of "Hunting Eichmann" (2009), Israel didn't even have a law on the subject of prosecutinbg Nazis and their collaborators until 1950, so they wouldn't have had one in place at the time of that first effort to capture Eichmann.

As to Kasztner, Bascomb writes: "The supreme court ... eventually ruled that Kasztner had saved Jewish lives rather than aided in their destruction -- but not until after he had been assassinated in March 1957."

Tough timing on that vindication, Kasztner ol' buddy.