Radiocasting Trauma

Two weeks into the Adolf Eichmann trial, toward the end of April 1961, the poet Haim Gouri, who chronicled the proceedings for a local Israeli newspaper, wrote in his column: “The country carries on as usual, day and night, and this trial accompanies it. The one goes on, the other alongside. Away from the courtroom, there is no outward sign of it. But it is in the air and the water, it is like dust on the trees.” Writing his impressions from Beit Ha’am, the Jerusalem theater venue converted to host the hearings, Gouri captured something of the sensation that paralleled the trial, that feeling of “something in the air,” gripping and haunting the everyday as the proceedings unfolded. What was in the air, or more precisely on the air, remains implicit in Gouri’s prose. As is often the case with media, their operation is likely to remain invisible or to be taken for granted, a tendency that sometimes occludes further understanding of certain historical episodes. Such is the case with the Eichmann trial, an event profoundly marked by what was then the principal mass medium in Israel—the radio. The Eichmann trial has recently received renewed attention from scholars in various fields. Indeed, some mention the role of radio during the time of the trial. To quote a few notable references: “Much of the trial was carried live on the radio; everywhere, people listened—in houses and offices, in cafés and stores and buses and factories.” “The trial, the full sessions of which were broadcast live on national radio, changed the face of Israel, psychologically binding the pastless young Israelis with their recent history and revolutionizing their selfperception.” “Broadcast live over the radio and passionately listened to, the trial was becoming the central event in the country’s life.” “The Eichmann trial was the most important media event in Israel prior to the Six Day War. . . . Young and old could be seen radio in hand everywhere—in constant earshot of the broadcast from Beit Ha’am.”