Ex-justice Gabriel Bach, prosecutor in trial of Adolf Eichmann, dies at 94

Born in Germany in 1927, Bach fled the country with his family in 1938, served for 15 years on the Supreme Court

By AP 20 February 2022, 7:58 pm

Edit

Gabriel Bach, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Israel and a former deputy prosecutor during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, poses for a picture while holding a photograph showing him (below) during Eichmann's (top) trial, at the yard of his home in Jerusalem on May 3, 2020. (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP)

Gabriel Bach, a prosecutor in the 1961 trial of notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann who went on to serve on Israel’s Supreme Court, has died. He was 94.

The Israel Judiciary Authority on Friday announced his passing. It did not provide a cause of death.

Bach served as a state’s attorney during Eichmann’s high-profile trial in Jerusalem and worked on evidence-gathering in the case under lead prosecutor Gideon Hausner.

Eichmann, one of Nazi Germany’s main organizers of the Holocaust, was captured by Israeli Mossad agents outside Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1960. He was put on trial in Jerusalem in 1961 and found guilty of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and war crimes. He was executed in 1962.

“If any person deserved death it was him,’” Bach said in a 2017 interview by Holocaust remembrance organization International March of the Living.

Bach was born in Germany in March 1927 and fled the country with his family in 1938, just one year before World War II broke out. He eventually immigrated to British Mandate for Palestine in 1940.

In 1982, Bach took the bench as a justice on Israel’s Supreme Court, where he served for 15 years.

Bach was to be laid to rest Sunday at Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuchot cemetery.