Israel: Battle for the Human Man

Adolf Eichmann was dead and his ashes thrown into the Mediterranean, but his execution will probably stir debate for years to come. The first critical postmortem came from Jewish Philosopher Martin Buber. All along, Buber had been opposed to the trial because it cast Israel in the role of both accuser and judge (he would have preferred an international tribunal). He also felt that the death penalty was wrong because no punishment could really expiate the Nazi crimes. Eichmann's execution, explained Buber last week, may only give Germany's youth an easy way of escaping the guilt feelings they harbored about their elders' actions. Yet these guilt feelings, he is convinced, were healthy, and helped to revive humanism in Germany.

The inner struggle over Germany's conscience, Buber believes, is part of a climactic, worldwide tug of war between the forces of "human" man and "antihuman" man that transcends political boundaries. "The arming for the final battle of the Homo humanus against the Homo contrahumanus started in the depth" of the heart, Buber said years ago. "The battlefront is split into as many individual fronts as there are nations, and those who stand at one of the individual fronts do not know the others. Dawn still shrouds the struggle, but on its outcome depends whether the human race will eventually become a human entity."

In that context, said Buber last week, Eichmann's hanging was a "mistake of historical dimensions. I cannot prove it now," he said, "but our children will. They will see how great a tragic error it was."