On May 23, 1960, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion convened a secret meeting of his cabinet ministers, and made the following dramatic announcement:
“Not long ago the [Israeli] security services found one of the great Nazi war criminals – Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible along with other Nazi leaders for what they called the final solution to the Jewish problem, that is, the extermination of the six million Jews of Europe. Adolf Eichmann is already under arrest in Israel and will soon face trial in Israel, in keeping with the laws governing justice for the Nazis and their helpers.”
For the very first time, a Nazi would stand trial on Jewish soil, tried by the legal system of a sovereign Jewish state. This was a moment of reckoning for the Jewish people, when the whole world would stand witness to a Nazi being tried in Jerusalem.
But fifteen years earlier, on September 7, 1945, Rabbi Uziel called for a Holocaust trial of a different kind. Just one day before the first post-World War II Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Uziel published an article depicting that year’s Rosh Hashanah as a “global day of judgment for all nations.”
Jewish tradition marks Rosh Hashanah as Yom Ha-Din – Judgment Day – when – on the anniversary of the creation of humanity – God sits in judgment over all of humanity.
What made Rosh Hashanah 1945 different?
“In these past several years, humanity was condemned to the fires, blood and destruction of a terrible world war,” wrote Rabbi Uziel. “Our world was subject to the terrifying threat of an evil and malicious regime, whose tyrannical rule was revealed in all its ugliness and depravity by the concentration camps and crematoria that it left behind for all of the world to see.”
Rabbi Uziel called for a global trial, not with judges in Jerusalem, but with the ultimate “Judge of all of humanity”:
“In the shadow of this destructive world war, all of humanity are now summoned before the Divine throne of justice, trembling in the presence of God on this Day of Judgment.”
What would be the prosecution’s accusation to the nations of the world – to those who murdered six million Jews, to those who collaborated in mass murder, and to those who stood by silently in the face of a systematic genocide?
“Today you stand trial for what you have done, and for what you could have done but did not do.”
From the post-Holocaust Rosh Hashanah in 1945, to the Eichmann Trial, to the post October 7th Rosh Hashanah in 2024 – this accusation still stands.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the international director of the Sephardic Educational Center.
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