Israeli judge of Nazi Eichmann dies at 99

Moshe Landau, chief judge in the 1961 trial of Nazi arch-criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, died Sunday on the eve of the annual memorial day for the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the government said. He was 99.

Landau was an Israeli Supreme Court justice when he was picked to head the three-judge panel for the Eichmann trial. Eichmann, who was in charge of the "final solution," the Nazi plan to kill all the Jews of Europe, was kidnapped from Argentina in 1960 by Israel's Mossad spy agency. He was convicted and hanged.

The trial, broadcast on Israeli radio and followed closely by the people, brought about a major change in attitudes toward Holocaust survivors. Up until then, Israelis, who saw themselves as self-sufficient heroes, denigrated the survivors as helpless victims. The trial brought out the horrors and deprivations the Jews faced, as well as their mostly feeble efforts to rebel, leading to a new appreciation of their plight among Israelis....