Judith Keilbach
Senior Fellow (04/2016 - 08/2016)
Televising the Eichmann Trial. Holocaust Memory and the Making of a Transnational Media Event
The trial against Adolf Eichmann is one of the first transnational television events. When the trial opened on April 11th, 1961, journalists from all over the world were in Jerusalem to report on the proceedings. The trial was not only covered in the printed press and on radio, but also recorded for television, with videotapes sent by plane to broadcasting stations in 38 countries where the recorded images were aired in news reports or special programs.
Understanding the trial as an early global media event this book project focuses on the technical and institutional preconditions that facilitated television broadcasts. It discusses the historical and political context of the trial, explores the transnational collaboration, negotiations and conflicts before and during the recording of the proceedings, and compares the trial coverage in different countries. Beyond analysing a particular media constellation, the project also provides an insight into the making of global media events and addresses Cold War politics and the rapidly changing global media landscape of that time.
Judith Keilbach is Assistant Professor for Television Studies at the Media and Culture Department of Utrecht University. She has published articles about Holocaust testimonies, the photographic depiction of the Holocaust and a book on television documentaries about National Socialism (Geschichtsbilder und Zeitzeugen, 2008). In 2013 she was Leibniz Summer Fellow at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam (ZZF) and in 2014 fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS).