Adolf Eichmann

After his conviction was upheld on appeal and clemency efforts were exhausted, Eichmann was hanged during the night of 31 May to 1 June 1962; his body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea beyond Israeli territorial waters.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Accused

Eichmann was tried by a special panel of the Jerusalem District Court. The prosecution presented documents and extensive survivor testimony concerning the persecution and deportation system in which he had participated.

Attribution

Accused

Eichmann portrayed himself as an operative without independent political power and claimed to have obeyed orders. He nevertheless acknowledged organising the transportation of millions of Jews to their deaths while denying personal guilt for the consequences.

Attribution

Accused

The court found Eichmann guilty on the principal counts and sentenced him to death on 15 December 1961.

Attribution

Accused

Israeli agents captured Eichmann near Buenos Aires and secretly took him to Israel. Argentina protested to the United Nations Security Council against the violation of its sovereignty.

State of the evidence

Documented

Eichmann was detained by American forces at the end of the war but escaped in 1946. He subsequently reached Argentina through clandestine networks and lived under the name Ricardo Klement, among others.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Eichmann became head of Gestapo/RSHA section IV B 4, from which he coordinated deportations of Jews across occupied Europe to ghettos, killing centres and execution sites.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Eichmann's apparatus extended deportations to Greece and then northern Italy, using specialist collaborators such as Alois Brunner, Dieter Wisliceny and Theodor Dannecker.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Following Germany's occupation of Hungary, Eichmann travelled there and, with his team, directed the rapid deportation of approximately 440,000 Hungarian Jews, mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

In Budapest, Eichmann proposed to Joel Brand an exchange of Jewish lives for lorries and other goods while his team was organising mass deportations to Auschwitz. The proposal became one of the most controversial episodes of rescue attempts in Hungary.

Attribution

Directly implicated

Heydrich instructed Eichmann to prepare materials for the Wannsee Conference, where representatives of German administrations coordinated implementation of the Final Solution.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Eichmann and his network of collaborators organised transports of Jews from several European countries to killing centres and other places of persecution.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

The USHMM places Eichmann among officials participating in discussions planning the annihilation of European Jews, while his department was expected to organise their transport to killing sites.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

As head of RSHA section IV D 4, Eichmann organised the deportation of nearly 7,000 Jews from Baden and Saar-Palatinate to southern France.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Eichmann devised the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, centralising bureaucratic coercion, confiscations and expulsions. Internal estimates cited by the USHMM indicate approximately 110,000 forced departures.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Eichmann was given responsibility for promoting the expulsion of Czech Jews and established an office in Prague modelled on the Vienna system.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Shortly after the outbreak of war, Eichmann coordinated the deportation of approximately 3,500 Jews from Moravia and Vienna to Nisko in occupied Poland, an early attempt at mass deportation from the enlarged Reich.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Following the Anschluss, Eichmann personally led a raid on the offices of Vienna's Jewish community as part of the Nazi takeover of Jewish institutions.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Eichmann joined the Nazi Party and SS in 1932, then transferred in 1934 to the SS security service, the SD, where he progressively specialised in Jewish and Zionist affairs.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated