Jeremy Rosen
60 Years After the Eichmann Execution: Jeremy Reflects on his Father’s Interview with the BBC

Yes they did. They were strongly in disagreement with him. They were apologetic. The truth is that Anglo Jewry had always been apologetic and continue to be and the thing that changed Anglo Jewry was the Six Day War. The Six Day War for the first time gave Jews a sense of pride in their identity and people no longer tended to hide their Jewish identity. It’s very difficult nowadays and yet still to this day there is a difference in culture, but I’m sorry to say that even in America now it is beginning to change and because so many Jews have not learned the lessons of history. They are either running away from their religion or hiding their identity.

I don’t think there is a moral equivalence. I think dropping the bomb, horrific as it was and terrible as it was, was intended not to exterminate but to force the Japanese who hitherto had refused to capitulate - and what other means were there of forcing capitulation to invade would have been catastrophic in terms of human loss. And so although I deplore the dropping of the bomb as a general principle, as I say there can be exceptions and I think this was an exception. I do abide by the view the nuclear deterrent was responsible for preventing mass loss or use of nuclear bombs. Words that could have been used by Russia on America or America theoretically on Russia and almost came to be used with the Cuban crisis at the time of Kennedy. So I am in favor of this and it’s very interesting because although as a child, I told my father I wanted to ban the bomb and I wanted to go on marches for nuclear disarmament. My father turned back to me and said you’re lucky we have a bomb. Otherwise, you might not be here today.