- Dramatisation of the team hoping to televise the trial of Adolf Eichmann, an infamous Nazi responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews. It focuses on Leo Hurwitz, a documentary film-maker and Milton Fruchtman, a producer.
- In 1961 former Nazi Adolf Eichmann is captured by Jewish agents and put on trial. American television producer Milton Fruchtman fervently believes that the trial with its witness accounts of Nazi atrocities should be televised to show the world the evils of the Holocaust and to combat any resurgence of Nazism and joins forces with black-listed director Leo Hurwitz. Despite death threats, reluctance to cooperate from several networks and even resistance from the Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who fears a 'show trial', the pair persist and move their cameras into the court-room. Edited daily and shown in some three dozen countries the 'Eichmann Show' becomes the first ever global television documentary.—don @ minifie-1
- In the 1960s the Israeli intelligence service tracked down and captured the former number one Nazi SS officer Adolph Eichmann from his hiding in Argentina. He was responsible for the final solution on the Jewish question, that is the systematic killings of Jews. In Jerusalem the Israeli government is holding a trial for Eichmann and they intend to televise the whole process. They had contracted New York based producer Milton Fruchtman to produce the TV program. Milton then hired Leo Hurwitz, a renowned documentary movie director to direct the show. Their first obstacle to face is the judges are having objections to the presence of cameras in the room, which they deem intimidating. So the production team staged the court rooms walls with holes to accommodate the cameras. As the trial begins Leo immediately dances through the camera positions and zooms and pans and getting the additional dramatic effects the program needed.
But Milton gets frustrated over the fact that they are losing audience over other world politics issues such as the Cuban missile crisis and Russias Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. The audience soon returns as the trial enters the witness testimonies, which stories touched the world deeply. Meanwhile Leo gets more and more obsessed in finding any little hint of humanity left within Eichmann, making him to focus the cameras on Eichmann frequently, to Miltons frustration. Milton barely escapes an assassination attempt and warns the team about their own personal safety. At last comes the moment in the trial where they show Eichmann the footage of the actual things happened in the concentration camps, to which Eichmann didnt flinch. Leo then gives up trying to proof his point about Eichmann as Eichmann is then sentenced to death.
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