Half a century after Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was convicted and hanged in Israel for engineering the deaths of millions of Jews, the bulletproof-glass booth where he sat facing justice has come to New York for a multimedia, you-are-there recreation of the courtroom.
It’s part of an exhibit at Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage that opens Sunday, created by a former agent of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service that captured Eichmann a decade after he fled to Argentina.
Surrounding Eichmann’s actual booth are screens with original video footage — seven minutes culled from 350 courtroom hours — that makes visitors feel like they’re spectators at the 1961 proceedings. They hear the voices of survivors who testified against the SS lieutenant-colonel, as well as the prosecutor and the defense attorney.