To the Editor:
As one of the charter members of the Commentary Publication Committee, I have until now adhered strictly to the tradition that the lay Board should be reluctant, at least in public, to comment on the contents of the magazine. I must admit, however, that when the Editor himself comments in a weighted way in “The Issue,” he invites members of his Board to express their disagreement.
In my opinion, Oscar Handlin’s statement in the August issue on the Eichmann case is perfectly clear and required no editorial comment or elucidation. What Israel has done is not right, as her repeated apologies to Argentina and her recent official statement on the subject have confessed. A trial in Israel, as Milton Himmelfarb points out in the same issue, cannot be in accordance with the old maxim that “justice must not only be done, it must manifestly be seen to be done.”
The Editor feels that in spite of these strong objections to Israel’s actions in the Eichmann case, there is some greater human good, unfortunately only defined emotionally, that is to be served by the clearly unlawful abduction and the doubtfully legal trial. Jacob Robinson and the Editor to the contrary notwithstanding, arguments based on concepts like “historic justice” and the virtues of emotional release are relevant to the battlefield and to trials by combat, not to the courtroom.
Naturally, no one would be very concerned about the matter, in view of Eichmann’s heinous crimes, if one could be sure that everyone would always regard Eichmann and the Nazis as unique in the history of mankind, and thus warranting a single exception to all accepted conceptions of proper legal and international procedures. Unfortunately, however, nothing in human affairs remains unique, even though it so appears to those who have experienced the particular situation. As the Editor himself states with regret, there is already a tendency among too many people in Israel to equate Arab hostility with Nazism, and elsewhere I have heard that descriptive epithet applied to various current anti-Jewish manifestations. Are not even the Editor and Milton Himmelfarb themselves perhaps guilty of expanding the exception to include crackpots such as Rockwell? Exceptions do have a way of eating up the rule—both in morals and in law.
Therefore, I take my stand with Oscar Handlin. No Jew can help but sympathize with the emotions sweeping the Israeli survivors of the Nazi hell, who see the trial as an opportunity to display to a forgetful world the evidence of their survival and of the defeat of their mortal enemies. But, as Sidney Hook warns, also in the August issue, the sacrifice of what is right, to an assumed, theoretical good—justifying the means by the end—has led in one nation of our modern world to the transformation of a whole generation of idealists into hangmen.
I have been asked to state that a number of other persons, similarly interested in and devoted to COMMENTARY, share the views I have tried to express in this letter. Indeed, several were in the process of preparing their own statements but felt that this letter would suffice.
Alan M. Stroock
New York City
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To the Editor:
It is incomprehensible to me that a man of the sensibility of Professor Handlin could question “the cleanliness of hands of those who presume to sit as judges.” . . . Let him and everybody else know that for the sake of justice the world cannot be permitted to close its eyes and shut its ears, but has to learn how and why millions of people were led to slaughter, and what were the motivations and drives of those responsible and in charge. The revelation of these facts and their commitment to the consciousness of the world contain the essence of the justice to be done to those who have gone. It also assures the protection of those who are left or yet to come in enabling the prevention of a repetition of such crimes. . . .
Egon R. Loebner
Princeton, New Jersey
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To the Editor:
The exchange between Professor Handlin and Dr. Jacob Robinson appeared on the heels of a decision from Buenos Aires wherein a federal judge held that the Argentine statute of limitations barred prosecution of a Nazi war criminal after fifteen years. He ruled that inasmuch as it is “obvious” that the defendant “could not be judged under Argentine law because he has acquired immunity through the passage of time, this country cannot allow him to stand trial in another country.”
For Eichmann, at least, justice delayed may not be justice denied.
Irving B. Zeichner
Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey
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To the Editor:
In reference to the final paragraph of the editorial in the July issue of COMMENTARY, I believe the most stringent demands we Jews feel are those we put upon and accept ourselves. Our stiffnecked concept of ethics and our singular belief that the morality of a religion lies in man’s relation to his fellow man makes us vulnerable to a conscience that is concerned with more than “the simple right to exist and therefore to be ‘merely’ human, and ‘like the nations.’”
Ellen Stone
Stinson Beach, Calif.
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To the Editor:
In Mr. Podhoretz’ discussion of the issues relating to the Eichmann case and Dr. Robinson’s article, he refers to “regular extradition procedures.” To avoid a possible misunderstanding of this reference, may I remark that it is doubtful if any “regular extradition procedures” exist which could be of relevance to the case—assuming, indeed, that the procedure of extradition of fugitive criminals is appropriate to the case of war criminals. Article 22 of the Extradition Treaty between Israel and the Argentine, signed in Buenos Aires on 9 May 1960, provides that the Treaty will come into force on the exchange of the instruments of ratification. Until those instruments are exchanged, the Treaty has no validity as a legal instrument and cannot provide the basis for extradition.
Michael Elizur
Counsellor
Israel Delegation to the UN
New York, N. Y.
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