This is a comic strip created by the American-Jewish cartoonist Julius Pfeiffer, originally published in the New York Herald Tribune and reprinted in Israel in the Maariv newspaper on June 25, 1963. In the strip there are two figures, a small child and a woman, either his mother or his teacher, who is telling him a story. The story refers, in an indirect way, to the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust. It begins with the words: “There were once six million people exterminated in a war.” The cartoon continues to describe the world’s feelings of guilt at this extermination that caused the remaining survivors to be sent to a land of their own, namely, Israel. “Riots” taking place in this country (Israel’s wars and conflicts) were blamed on these people (the Jews) who “always make a fuss,” but then, remembering the six million, the world became silent again. However, academics then came and shared their findings that the six million had died willingly, and the world immediately felt a “wonderful redemption” of their guilty conscience and agreed to rearm the very country that had exterminated the six million in the first place. The conclusion of the story, according to the woman, is: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
The cartoon emphasises the fact that the shortness of the path to Germany’s forgiveness and justifies the rearming of Germany on the basis that the extermination of the Jews was in fact their own fault. The entire comic strip is a damning critique of Hannah Arendt’s arguments about the course of the Holocaust. Arendt, a German-born Jewish publicist and thinker, had been sent by The New Yorker to cover the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem. She accused the Jews of “bringing the trouble on themselves” and not taking any concrete steps to prevent the Holocaust. In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, she claimed that the Jewish Councils in the ghetto contributed significantly to the implementation of the Final Solution: “this role played by the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is without doubt the darkest chapter in the entire dark story.” This concept of “the banality of evil” sparked widespread debate and criticism. Arendt also claimed that the Eichmann trial served as a tool to strengthen the Zionist idea.
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The Eichmann Trial – With the end of World War II, the world leaders attempted to bring the Nazi war criminals to trial. Adolph Eichmann had been a senior leader of the SS and one of the major architects of the Holocaust. He managed to avoid capture for many years and fled to Argentina. In a secret mission, the Mossad captured Eichmann in 1961, and the public trial subsequently opened in Jerusalem. The trial aroused considerable interest both in Israel and around the world and was broadcast live on television and radio. It was also one of the first opportunities for many to hear first-hand testimonies about the Holocaust and for survivors to finally share their terrible experiences. After nine months of lengthy hearings, the verdict was finally announced: Eichmann’s claim that he was merely following orders was rejected, and he was sentenced to death. On May 28, 1962 Eichmann was executed by hanging. This is the only case of execution in the history of the State of Israel. Eichmann’s body was burned, and his ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean Sea, outside of Israel's territorial waters.
Holocaust – The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide and persecution of European Jewry by the German Nazi regime and its collaborators in Europe and North Africa during World War II. The Holocaust was implemented in stages from Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party’s first rise to power. From 1933 anti-Jewish laws were passed in Germany which excluded the Jews from German society. The Nazis also began to create a network of concentration camps where Jews and other “undesirable elements” of society were imprisoned in inhumane conditions. With the Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II, which started in 1939, the formal persecution of Jews was implemented in all the occupied countries. Jews were sent to ghettos, made to work in forced labour, and lived in appalling conditions. In 1942 the Nazis held the Wannsee Conference where they decided on the Final Solution which detailed the extermination all the Jews of Europe. Initially, more than one million Jews were exterminated by death squads named Einsatzgruppen, who were assisted by local collaborators. As of 1942 Jews were deported from the ghettos to death camps in Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, where millions were murdered in gas chambers on arrival. Jews who were not immediately murdered were sent to force labour, and many died as a result of the harsh conditions, starvation, and disease. Jewish resistance was extremely difficult, but attempts to fight the Nazis were made by Jewish partisans and fighters in uprisings such as, most famously, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Sobibor Uprising. In 1944, as it became clear that the Nazis were losing the war, Nazi camp commanders began to close the camps and forced the survivors to march towards Germany. Already sick and weak from the years of violence, more than 250,000 Jews died on these death marches. The Holocaust came to an end with the defeat of the Nazis in May 1945. Six million Jews, two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, were murdered with millions more experiencing tremendous suffering, violence, and loss. In addition to the Jews, millions of Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people, and Soviet and Polish prisoners of war were also murdered during the Holocaust.
