Eichmann Trial -- Session 25 -- Testimony of Y. Zuckerman

Session 25. Witness Yitzhak Zuckerman discusses Jewish hope to immigrate to Palestine during 1940: "Some people managed to reach Palestine...Some were caught and returned... and were murdered on Polish soil." He also describes the efforts of the Jewish underground in Warsaw. Attorney General Gideon Hausner questions Zuckerman about his fake Aryan papers, as well as his impressions of Nazi-occupied Poland. Zuckerman replies: "Degredation, depression, helplessness..." Court is out of session after a blip at 00:06:30; the audience enters, and the camera focuses on the Israeli Police Officers and media interpreters. The Judges enter and open the next session; Hausner questions Zuckerman about deportations and Nazi treatment of elderly people. He asks Zuckerman about the Jewish fighting force. Hausner submits exhibit T/254-Mueller's letter about the capture of 'three Jewish bandits' who organized resistance efforts. Zuckerman continues to describe resistance efforts in Poland-specifically in Warsaw. He details his activities as a resistance fighter and mentions collaborations with the Polish underground: "We obtained arms, we also killed Germans, we also took arms from them... And the last thing that we received-the faith that we knew how to fight." Hausner submits exhibit T/255-a letter written by Mordechai Anielewicz, leader of the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto. Zuckerman reads a portion of the letter: "Something occurred which is beyond our wildest dreams. Twice the Germans fled from the ghetto... I was privileged to see Jewish self defense in the ghetto in all its greatness and magnificence." Following a blip at 00:55:22, Zuckerman gives his assessment of the Jewish fighting resistance. Born in Vilna, Lithuania, in 1915, Yitzhak Zuckerman became a member of the Zionist youth movement He-Chalutz Ha-Tsa'ir. In 1936, he joined the movement headquarters and became one of its two Secretaries General. When the war broke out in September 1939, he left Warsaw and traveled east. In April, 1940, following the movement's instructions, he crossed back over the border and returned to Nazi-occupied territories, settlingin Warsaw and acting as a local and national youth movement leader. "Antek", as he was called, set up underground networks throughout Poland, organized educational activities, and regularly visited the various ghettos. During his work he met a fellow activist, Zivia Lubetkin, who later became his wife. After the German invasion of the USSR in the autumn, 1941, news of Jewish massacres spread. Antek knew that resistance had to be organized. He joined the Antifascist Bloc and attended the founding meetings of the ZOB, in July, 1942, calling for Jewish resistance. On December 22, 1942, he was wounded in Krakow during a German military action against the local Jewish organization. He managed to return to Warsaw, and helped lead the preparations of the April, 1943, uprising as the commander of one of the three sectors of the ghetto. As a representative of the ZOB, Antek was sent to the Polish side of the city, to secure contacts with the Polish underground fighting organizations, a mission which probably saved his life. While he was away, the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the uprising occurred. After the fall of the ghetto, Antek helped the survivors, hidden on the Aryan side, and kept in touch with partisans and Jewish labor camp inmates. He headed the Jewish Fighters Unite of the Polish uprising of August, 1944. After the war he was active in social and welfare activities with survivors, in the rebirth of the He-Chalutz movement, and in the organization of the exodus of the remnants of Polish Jewry to Israel in 1946-47. Zuckerman, together with his wife, Zivia Lubetkin, left Poland in 1947. They were among the founders of Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot and the Museum Beit Lohamei Haghetaot. Yitzhak Zuckerman died in 1981, on his kibbutz, at the age of 66. **Courtesy of The Ghetto Fighters' House: Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum, Israel. Emil Knebel was a cinematographer known for Andante (2010), Adam (1973), and Wild Is My Love (1963). He was one of the cameramen who recorded daily coverage of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (produced by Capital Cities Broadcasting Corp and later held academic positions in Israel and New York teaching filmmaking at universities. Refer to CV in file.