The Christmas of the Eichmann Trial
I just finished watching the most gripping film about Adolf Eichmann. My Uncle Albert’s birthday fell on Christmas Day. It was customary to celebrate his birthday with great gusto! Friends and family gathered at his home to celebrate the occasion. There was music and dancing. There was lots of food and an unending supply of booze. That particular Christmas we were all at my Uncle’s house celebrating his birthday. I was a teenager. Because of what transpired that day, I even remember the dress I was wearing. It was a red dress trimmed with rabbit fur pompoms. Nobody was really celebrating, for the trial of Adolf Eichmann was being broadcast on the radio. Everyone was eagerly listening to the trial which was being broadcast on the radio. Televisions were not common in those days. If anyone cared to have a conversation, they did so in a hushed voice or left to another room to converse. One of the guests that night was Mr. Schmidt, a representative of one of the German companies that my father and my uncle represented. He had been in Tehran for two to three years and considered himself to be a close friend of my uncle. On that night he was downing the whisky at a phenomenal rate, as if it was water. He was listening to the radio and becoming greatly agitated by the news about Eichmann. All of a sudden he broke out into unrepressed loud sobs. The room fell deathly silent. He was a guest of a Jewish man and his family. It was a birthday celebration and Christmas Day. We were all shocked. The Holocaust was a recent event. It had affected us all in one form or the other.
This was a family celebration and there were many children there who had come for the birthday party. They had never seen a grown man sob like that. They did not know how to react. The adults did not know how to react! Here was a man who had shared in all our family celebrations, even the Jewish holidays. We had never even considered that he was a Nazi sympathizer. He was Kurt Schmidt, a friend.