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Gideon Hausner (26 September 1915 – 15 November 1990) was an Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
i jurist and politician. Between 1960 and 1963 he served as Attorney General
Attorney General of Israel

The Attorney General of Israel stands at the head of the legal system of the executive authority and of the public legal service, and in the force of that duty he is responsible for the protection of the rule of law in the essential-moral meaning in the State of Israel and of the public interests from possible strike by the authorities of th...
, and was later elected to the Knesset and served in the cabinet
Cabinet of Israel

The Cabinet of Israel is a formal body composed of government officials chosen and led by a Prime Minister of Israel. Its composition must be approved by a vote in the Knesset....
.

Hausner is most widely known for heading the team of prosecutor
Prosecutor

The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the Civil law inquisitorial system....
s at the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann

Karl Adolf Eichmann , sometimes referred to as "the architect of the Holocaust", was a Nazism and Schutzstaffel-Obersturmbannf?hrer . Due to his organizational talents and ideological reliability, he was charged by Obergruppenf?hrer Reinhard Heydrich with the task of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of J...
 in Jerusalem
Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and its List of Israeli cities in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if Positions on Jerusalem East Jerusalem is included....
 in 1961. Hausner is generally credited with exposing the Holocaust to the world in bold cross-examinations of Eichmann.






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Gideon Hausner (26 September 1915 – 15 November 1990) was an Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
i jurist and politician. Between 1960 and 1963 he served as Attorney General
Attorney General of Israel

The Attorney General of Israel stands at the head of the legal system of the executive authority and of the public legal service, and in the force of that duty he is responsible for the protection of the rule of law in the essential-moral meaning in the State of Israel and of the public interests from possible strike by the authorities of th...
, and was later elected to the Knesset and served in the cabinet
Cabinet of Israel

The Cabinet of Israel is a formal body composed of government officials chosen and led by a Prime Minister of Israel. Its composition must be approved by a vote in the Knesset....
.

Hausner is most widely known for heading the team of prosecutor
Prosecutor

The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the Civil law inquisitorial system....
s at the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann

Karl Adolf Eichmann , sometimes referred to as "the architect of the Holocaust", was a Nazism and Schutzstaffel-Obersturmbannf?hrer . Due to his organizational talents and ideological reliability, he was charged by Obergruppenf?hrer Reinhard Heydrich with the task of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of J...
 in Jerusalem
Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and its List of Israeli cities in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if Positions on Jerusalem East Jerusalem is included....
 in 1961. Hausner is generally credited with exposing the Holocaust to the world in bold cross-examinations of Eichmann. His judicial skill also set the precedent that the defense "I was only following orders"
Nuremberg Defense

The Nuremberg Defense is a legal defense that essentially states that the defendant was "only following orders" and is therefore not responsible for his crimes....
 is not valid if such orders are wholly criminal and illegal. The prosecution succeeded in proving Eichmann's guilt, and Eichmann was found guilty on all charges, including crimes against humanity
Crime against humanity

Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings....
 and crimes against the Jewish people. He was sentenced to death.

Biography

Born in Lemberg, capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria

The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria official ) was a kingdom dependent to the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire and Austria?Hungary from 1772 to 1917; independent from July 26, 1917 to November 14, 1918....
, a province of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Kaiserlich und k?niglich Monarchy was a state in Central Europe ruled by the House of Habsburg, constitutionally a personal union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary....
, Hausner immigrated
Aliyah

Aliyah refers to Jewish immigration to Greater Israel. The opposite action, Jewish emigration from Israel, is referred to as Yerida ....
 to Mandate Palestine in 1927. He attended high school in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv-Yafo , usually Tel Aviv, is the List of largest cities and second largest cities by country List of cities in Israel in Israel, with an estimated population of 390,100....
 before studying philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel's oldest university.The First Board of Governors included Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, and Chaim Weizmann....
 and then law at the Jerusalem Law School.

A member of the Hagana, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
1948 Arab-Israeli War

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War, known by the Israelis predominantly as War of Independence and War of Liberation , and by Palestinians as the Catastrophe , was the first in a series of wars fought between the Declaration of Independence State of Israel and its Arab neighbours in the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict....
 he served in the Etzioni Brigade. After the conflict he worked as a military prosecutor, and then as president of the military court.

In 1960 he was appointed Attorney General, but resigned from the post in 1963 and pursued a career in politics. He was elected to the Knesset in 1965 as a member of the Independent Liberals
Independent Liberals (Israel)

The Independent Liberals were a List of political parties in Israel in Israel and are one of the ancestors of the modern-day Labor Party ....
, having previously been active in the Progressive Party
Progressive Party (Israel)

The Progressive Party was a List of political parties in Israel in Israel....
 (the Independent Liberals were a breakaway group of mostly Progressive Party members following the party's merger into Gahal
Gahal

Gahal was the major Right wing politics List of political parties in Israel in Israel from its founding in 1965 until it merged into Likud in 1973....
). He was re-elected in 1969 and 1973, and resigned from the Knesset upon being appointed a Minister without Portfolio
Minister without Portfolio

A Minister without Portfolio is either a government minister with no specific responsibilities or a minister that does not head a particular ministry ....
 in 1974. Re-elected in 1977 as the only member of the party, he lost his seat in the 1981 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1981

Elections in Israel for the tenth Knesset were held in Israel on 30 June 1981. Despite last minute polls suggesting a victory for Shimon Peres's Alignment , Menachem Begin's Likud won by just one seat.Voter turnout was 77.8%....
 when the party failed to cross the electoral threshold
Election threshold

In party-list proportional representation systems, an election threshold is a clause that stipulates that a party must receive a minimum percentage of votes, either nationally or within a particular district, to get any seats in the parliament....
.

He was also the chairman of the council of Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem

File:Yad Vashem BW 3.JPGYad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
.

Bibliography



External links