Adolf Eichmann, one of the most famous Nazis responsible for deporting Jews to death camps in Poland, grew up in Austria and his mother died in his childhood. He practiced various professions before joining the Nazi Party and the Austrian Party Corps in Bavaria.
Try to visit Palestine To study the deportation of Jews to it before he was tasked with developing a plan to exterminate European Jews. His life ended with execution by hanging in 1962 after he was kidnapped by Israeli Foreign Intelligence (Mossad) and tried in Israel.
Birth and upbringing
Adolf Eichmann was born on March 19, 1906, in the city of Solingen in western Germany. His father, Karl Eichmann, worked as an accountant in an electrical company, before moving in 1913 to another job in Austria.
Adolf and his five brothers traveled to live with their father in the city of Linz in northern Austria after the death of their mother, coinciding with the beginning of the war First World WarAnd the father’s service in the Austro-Hungarian army.
When he was young, children used to call him “the Jew” because of his skin color, which was less white than that of Europeans.
In 1935, Eichmann married a woman named Veronica in Germany, with whom he had 4 children: Klaus, Horst, Dieter, and Francisco.
Scientific formation
Eichmann began his studies in Austria and completed his formal education, then studied mechanical engineering, but he did not complete his education due to economic circumstances, as the world at that time was affected by the economic crisis that followed World War I.
Professional and political experience
Eichmann moved between several professions after dropping out of education. He began working with his father in a mining company for two years, then worked as a salesman in stores in Austria, then in an oil company.
His work continued until 1932, when Ernst Kaltenbrunner offered him to join the Nazi Party in Austria. He was part of the Austrian Legion, which represented an association for unemployed Nazi Party members.
In 1933, Eichmann returned to Germany, and the following year he joined the German SS Division, and was in the office responsible for Jewish affairs.
In 1937, he tried to travel to Palestine to study the possibility of deporting Jews there, but the British authorities did not grant him an entry visa, so he decided to travel to Cairo.
In Cairo, he met a member of the organization “HaganahHe also met with the Mufti of Palestine Amin Al-HusseiniThen he wrote a report opposing the idea of deporting Jews en masse to Palestine.
Eichmann’s opposition was for economic reasons, and to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state with Nazi thought, but he worked hard to study Jewish immigration, which qualified him for important positions later.
In March 1938, after the German annexation of Austria, Eichmann returned to Germany, led a campaign against Jewish cultural offices, and worked to establish a central office for Jewish immigration.
On August 20, 1938, the office was opened, which facilitated the immigration of more than 100,000 Austrian Jews in the period between August 1938 and June 1939.
The office succeeded in forcing Jews to immigrate by establishing an ideal model called the “Vienna Model,” and Eichmann rose in the German Special Forces with the beginning of World War IIHe became a team leader in the SS, and established relations with the Jewish Immigration Office.
He made contacts with the “Zionist Movement” to accelerate the migration of Jews from the “Third Reich” to Palestine, and then returned to Berlin 1939.
There, Eichmann assumed leadership of the office at the beginning of October 1939, but his success in this mission was less than the previous one.
Extermination of the Jews
The Reich Main Security Office was formed in the period following Eichmann’s return to Germany, issued the Madagascar Project and developed a plan for forced deportations of Jews, but it was not implemented.
In 1940, he was promoted to the rank of major in the German Special Forces, after attempting the mass deportation of Jews, which began with the outbreak of World War II, which satisfied German officials with his efforts.
In 1941, Heydrich, head of the Main Security Office, ordered Eichmann to participate in planning the extermination of German Jews.
In January 1942, Heidrich asked him to give a lecture after assuming the position of director of the final transportation of Jews to the death camps in Poland, at a conference held for senior Nazi officials in the Wannsee district in Berlin. The goal of the conference was to organize the logistics of what the Nazis called the “Final Solution.” for the Jewish question.
Eichmann, along with his assistants in various regions, undertook the process of transporting Jews from all over Europe to extermination centers (the Jews call it the Holocaust).
In 1945, Heinrich Himmler ordered the commander of the Nazi Special Forces to stop the extermination of the Jews, and to erase any trace of the extermination operations. This angered Adolf Eichmann, so he completed his efforts in extermination in Hungary directly, and none of his assistants took charge of it, and he was able to evade being summoned to participate in the military upholstery. German.
Escape and kidnapping
Eichmann entered soviet union He returned to Austria, where he met his friend Kalter Brunner, who was worried about contacting Eichmann because he was famous for deporting Jews to gas chambers.
After the end of World War II, the United States arrested Adolf, but he was able to escape from the American prison at the beginning of 1946, and after moving in Germany in hiding, he fled to Italy at the beginning of 1950.
His escape was with the help of the Catholic Church, in which he lived under assumed names and assumed characters, the most famous of which was the refugee Ricardo Clement. He obtained an International Committee of the Red Cross passport in Geneva, and also obtained an Argentine visa under his fake name, with the help of a monk.
On July 14, 1950, he traveled to Argentina and worked in various strange jobs, including supervising workers at the Mercedes factory and responsible for water in rabbit farms.
During that period, the search for Nazi leaders was active, and Israeli intelligence was able to collect information about him, through a rapprochement between his family and the family of Luther Hermann, who settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Holocaust survivor Hermann had hidden that he and his family were Jewish and was blind, but one day he heard Eichmann’s voice, proudly repeating his father’s responsibility for transporting Jews to extermination camps.
When the blind Hermann recognized the voice of Eichmann, who had saved him from the Nazi torture camps, correspondence began between Hermann and the West German state prosecutor, and he contacted Israeli officials.
On May 11, 1960, Mossad agents were near Eichmann’s house waiting for him to return from his work at the Mercedes factory, and they kidnapped him and deported him. To Jerusalem to stand trial.
His kidnapping was “like hunting a monster,” according to what Rafael Eitan, one of the founders of the Israeli intelligence service, told a newspaper, because David Ben-Gurion He wanted to capture him alive.
Ben-Gurion said, “If you kill Eichmann, the world will never know what he did. We need to remind the world of what he did and what the Jews went through.”
After interrogating him and confessing that he was Adolf Eichmann, Mossad members dyed his hair, put a fake mustache on him, and drugged him so that he could be transferred without objection from the Argentine authorities.
On May 23, 1960, Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion announced the news of Eichmann’s arrest in a session of the Knesset, and Argentina demanded an urgent meeting of the Security Council at the United Nations, considering the kidnapping incident a violation of Argentina’s sovereign rights, after the failure of secret negotiations between Argentina and Israel.
The Israeli government representative denied Golda Meir Eichmann was kidnapped, and she said that Jewish volunteers were the ones who did it.
Trial and execution
Adolf Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem for committing war crimesHe was charged with 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity Another is against the Jewish people and belonging to a banned organization.
His trial, presided over by three judges, received global attention, and he stood before the judges in a bulletproof glass cage to protect him from the families of the victims, according to Israel.
Eichmann defended himself in court by saying that he was merely carrying out the orders of his Nazi leaders, but the more than 100 witnesses denied this, which invalidated his defense.
On August 14, Eichmann was convicted and sentenced Sentenced to deathOn December 15, 1961, his death sentence was issued, but he appealed the ruling and claimed that he was protecting the state, but the court rejected the appeal and said that he had not received any higher orders for his crimes.
Adolf Eichmann was executed by hanging on the night of May 31, 1962 in Ramla prison. He was not buried, but the Jewish authorities burned his body and scattered his ashes in the sea outside the Israeli border waters, so that no land would be his final resting place.
Several cinematic works were produced about his story and trial, which sparked an international uproar.
