In 1961, Adolf Eichmann ,the chief architect of the Holocaust went on trial in Israel, after being apprehended in Argentina. The footage of the trail was shown on television in 37 countries  as a result of the efforts of  producer Milton Fruchtman and director Leo Hurwitz who made that broadcast possible. For the first time people around the world sitting in their living rooms were confronted with the true extent of Nazi atrocities, hearing them directly from the mouths of survivors. The Eichmann Show tells the story of the behind the scenes filming of the  trial, through the eyes of  Fruchtman and Hurwitz, a genius director who becomes obsessed with seeing if he can find any trace of  humanity in Eichmann.

One of the most compelling aspects of the The Eichmann Show was the decision by director Paul Andrew Williams  not to attempt any enactment of the dramatic scenes that took place in the courtroom but rather to interweave archival clips from  the original 1961 footage of the trial throughout  the docudrama. I had never seen clips from the Eichmann trial before watchingThe Eichmann Show as the trial took place before I was born. The archival clips of the trial enable a  a new generation to stare into the devastating eyes of evil. We can watch how Eichmann seemed indifferent to hearing the horrors recalled by the witnesses at the trial, and we can get a sense of how much was at stake at the trial, since it becomes unimaginable that Eichmann could get off.