It is based on the true story of how American TV producer Milton Fruchtman and blacklisted TV director Leo Hurwitz came to broadcast the trial of one of World War II's most notorious Nazis, Adolf Eichmann, in 1961.[2]
Plot
In 1961, former Nazi Adolf Eichmann is captured by Israeli agents and put on trial. American television producer Milton Fruchtman fervently believes that the trial, with its witness accounts of Nazi atrocities, should be televised to show the world the evils of the Holocaust, and to combat any resurgence of Nazism, and joins forces with blacklisted director Leo Hurwitz. Despite death threats, reluctance to cooperate from several networks, and even resistance from the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who fears a 'show trial', the pair persist and move their cameras into the courtroom. Edited daily and shown in some three dozen countries, the 'Eichmann Show' becomes the first ever global television documentary.
The film postscript reads: "After adjourning on the 14th August, the judges declared Eichmann responsible for the terrible conditions on board the trains to Auschwitz, and for obtaining Jews to fill those trains. Eichmann was also found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against Poles, Slovenes and Gypsies. Adolf Eichmann was hanged on the 31 May 1962. His ashes were cast into the sea. The daily films produced and directed by Milton Fruchtman and Leo Hurwitz constitute the world's first ever global television documentary series. It was the first time the horror of the Nazi death camps had been heard on television, from the mouths of 112 eye witnesses and survivors. For his work on the Eichmann trial, Milton Fruchtman won a Peabody Award together with Capital Cities Broadcasting Corporation,[3] and he went on to have a successful career in American television. Leo Hurwitz continued to make documentary films. He went on to become Professor of Film and Chairman of the Graduate Institute of Film and Television at New York University."[4][unreliable source?]
^"The Eichmann Show: New BBC film tells story behind trial's broadcast". Haaretz.com. Amos Schocken. 21 January 2015. Archived from the original on 21 January 2015. Retrieved 18 March 2015. [G]roundbreaking American film producer Milton Fruchtman... was given the job of televising the so-called "Trial of the Century" in Jerusalem in 1961. The broadcasts lasted for over four months and were shown in 56 countries. ... [The] televised trial "became the world's first ever documentary series, and in the process changed the way people saw the Second World War," Laurence Bowen, the films's producer, told BBC. "It was the first time many people had ever heard the story of the Holocaust from the mouths of the victims. So it had a huge impact historically, but it also was a huge event in terms of television." ... [Fruchtmann] said, "In the end every German television station showed segments of the trial each evening. Children who had not learned about the Nazis in school heard about the war for the first time."
