Facing the Glass Booth

When Adolf Eichmann stood trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Israel and the rest of the world experienced a reaction unlike any other produced by proceedings against a Nazi war criminal. Although some details about the Holocaust were generally known by the early sixties, the painful topic had slipped from public discussion as countries touched by World War II moved on to other pressing matters. Among Israeli-Jews fighting for a new homeland, the near-extermination of European Jewry was misunderstood as an embarrassment - an instance of Jewish impotence in the face of victimization by the Nazis. However, as the head of Hitler's Race and Resettlement Office stood trial on Israeli soil under the eye of the international media and Israeli survivors told their powerful stories to the world, the Holocaust became a defining experience for Zionism and human history. This is a detailed account of Eichmann's trial by the poet and journalist Haim Gouri, who was assigned to cover the event by the Israeli daily newspaper ""Lamerhav"". The trial changed attitudes towards the Holocaust and Gouri's reporting was the literary catalyst of this change.

Facing the Glass Booth is a superb translation from the original Hebrew account by Haim Gouri containing the sensitive and profound insights and observations of a journalist/poet who attended the drama unfolding in Jerusalem in April, 1961 as a reporter for the newspaper Lamerhav. Gouri's reportage-c?m-literary work provides a fascinating account of unimaginable evil as well as extraordinary epic of survival that lays bare the physical and emotional scars of the victims and the painful self reproach of many survivors.--Jewish Book World, The publication of Haim Gouri's Facing the Glass Booth is long overdue. This book is an eloquent and compassionate work of journalism, history and literature. It's a unique achievement in Holocaust writing. Not until Gouri's courtroom reporting did the young nation of Israel come to grips with the horrors of World War II. It found the voice to articulate and to chronicle the physical and emotional pain as well as the shame of survivors. Gouri's narrative must be read and re-read in every home, in every generation. Gouri the poet is also Gouri the historian and teacher."--Steven T. Katz "professor of Religion and director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University "

Haim Gouri was born in Tel Aviv in 1923 and in 1941 joined the Palmach, the elite commando units of the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces. An award-winning poet, journalist, and novelist, as well as a documentary filmmaker, Gouri has devoted much of his career to exploring political and cultural shifts in his country. Alan Mintz is editor of the journal Prooftexts and is a professor in the Department of Jewish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.