I am not standing alone

Gideon Hausner was born in what is now Lvov in Ukraine. His father was a Polish rabbi and economist (a person who studies how money works) named Bernard Hausner. Later, they moved to Palestine (what is now Israel) for his father to be a money-based advisor in Haifa and later in Tel Aviv. 

Gideon Hausner went to high school in Tel Aviv before studying philosophy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and then he studied law at the Jerusalem Law School.  Gideon Hausner spoke Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish (a combination of Hebrew and German spoken by Jews in many European countries), English, and German.

He was a member of the Haganah (a military group), during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Later he worked as a military lawyer. 

From 1960-1963 Hausner was the attorney general of Israel and then was a member of the Knesset (the government)  in 1965. He was a part of Golda Meir's advisory board as well as on the council for Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Israel.

Hausner is most famous for prosecuting the Nazi Adolf Eichmann who was caught in Argentina and put on trial in Jerusalem. Justice was very important to him, as was making sure those who suffered in the Holocaust were able to tell their stories. 

In his opening statement, Hausner declared, “I do not stand alone here in denouncing this man. Beside me stand the 6 million who can no longer stand here to accuse him.”

Afterwards, Hausner wrote a book about the trial, “Justice in Jerusalem,” which was published in 1966.

He was married to a woman named Judith and they had two children: Tamar and Amos. He died in November of 1990- around the same time Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School was founded in Palo Alto, CA (it was originally named Mid-Peninsula Jewish Day School, and was renamed to honor Hausner in 2003). Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School is, thus far, the only school named after the famous Israeli jurist.