Yad Vashem puts Eichmann trial on YouTube

Israel's Yad Vashem museum on Friday said it had uploaded footage of the entire trial of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann to YouTube to mark the 50 years since the groundbreaking court case.

Eichmann, who was captured by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960, was brought to Israel and put on trial on April 11, 1961 for his central role in the genocide of some six million Jews.

Eight months later he was sentenced to death, and was hanged in May 1962.

"Uploading this footage on the 50th anniversary of this landmark trial, gives a new generation the opportunity to view one of the most significant turning points in humanity's attempt to grapple with the Holocaust," said Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev.

The footage, which is being shown on separate YouTube channels - one in the original Hebrew, German and Yiddish, and a second dubbed into English - would give people a rare opportunity "to see and hear the survivors' testimony first hand," Shalev said.

In total, some 400 hours of film have been uploaded onto the video sharing website.

The initiative is part of a larger project launched earlier this year by Yad Vashem and Google to post all of the museum's Holocaust documents on the Internet.

The version dubbed into English can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/EichmannTrialEN while the original language version can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/EichmannTrial