Thread by @marinamaral2

On this day in 1961: Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death for war crimes in Israel.

Charged with managing and facilitating the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and killing centers in the German-occupied East, he was among the major organizers of the Holocaust.

At the end of the war, Eichmann was captured by US forces and spent time in several camps for SS officers using forged papers that identified him as "Otto Eckmann". He escaped from a work detail at Cham, Germany when he realized that his actual identity had been discovered.

He obtained new identity papers with the name of "Otto Heninger" and relocated frequently over the next several months, moving ultimately to the Lüneburg Heath.

Meanwhile, former commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss and others gave damning evidence about Eichmann at the Nuremberg trials of major war criminals starting in 1946.

In 1948, Eichmann obtained a landing permit for Argentina and false identification under the name of "Ricardo Klement" through an organization directed by Bishop Alois Hudal, an Austrian cleric then residing in Italy with known Nazi sympathies.

These documents enabled him to obtain an International Committee of the Red Cross humanitarian passport and the remaining entry permits in 1950 that would allow emigration to Argentina.

Eichmann initially lived in Tucumán Province, where he worked for a government contractor. He sent for his family in 1952, and they moved to Buenos Aires. He held a series of low-paying jobs until finding employment at Mercedes-Benz, where he rose to department head.

Several survivors of the Holocaust dedicated themselves to finding Eichmann and other Nazis, and among them was Jewish Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

Lothar Hermann was also instrumental in exposing Eichmann's identity; he was a half-Jewish German who had emigrated to Argentina in 1938.

His daughter Sylvia began dating a man named Klaus Eichmann in 1956 who boasted about his father's Nazi exploits, and Hermann alerted Fritz Bauer, prosecutor-general of the state of Hesse in West Germany.

He then sent his daughter on a fact-finding mission; she was met at the door by Eichmann himself, who said that he was Klaus's uncle. Klaus arrived not long after, however, and addressed Eichmann as "Father".

In 1957, Bauer passed along the information in person to Mossad director Isser Harel, who assigned operatives to undertake surveillance, but no concrete evidence was initially found.

Harel dispatched Shin Bet chief interrogator Zvi Aharoni to Buenos Aires on 1 March 1960, and he was able to confirm the identity of the fugitive after several weeks of investigation.

Photo: Adolf Eichmann on a rabbit farm in Argentina, 1953.

Argentina had a history of turning down extradition requests for Nazi criminals, so rather than filing a possibly futile request for extradition, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made the decision that Eichmann should be captured and brought to Israel for trial.

Harel arrived in May 1960 to oversee the capture. Mossad operative Rafi Eitan was named leader of the eight-man team, most of whom were Shin Bet agents.

The team captured Eichmann on 11 May 1960 near his home on Garibaldi Street in San Fernando, Buenos Aires, an industrial community 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of the centre of Buenos Aires.

Photo: Panoramic surveillance photograph of Eichmann's house, Buenos Aires

The agents had arrived in April and observed his routine for many days, noting that he arrived home from work by bus at about the same time every evening. They planned to seize him when he was walking beside an open field from the bus stop to his house.

(Surveillance photos)

Mossad agent Peter Malkin engaged him, asking him in Spanish if he had a moment. Eichmann was frightened and attempted to leave, but two more Mossad men came to Malkin's aid.

The three wrestled Eichmann to the ground and, after a struggle, moved him to a car where they hid him on the floor under a blanket.

Eichmann was taken to one of several Mossad safe houses that had been set up by the team. He was held there for nine days, during which time his identity was double-checked and confirmed.

During these days, Harel tried to locate Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor from Auschwitz, as the Mossad had information that he was also living in Buenos Aires. He was hoping to bring Mengele back to Israel on the same flight.

However, Mengele had already left his last known residence in the city, and Harel was unable to get any leads on where he had gone, so the plans for his capture had to be abandoned.

Near midnight on 20 May, Eichmann was sedated by an Israeli doctor on the Mossad team and dressed as a flight attendant. He was smuggled out of Argentina aboard the same El Al Bristol Britannia aircraft that had carried Israel's delegation a few days earlier.

They arrived in Israel on 22 May, and Ben-Gurion announced Eichmann's capture to the Knesset the following afternoon. In Argentina, the news of the abduction was met with a violent wave of antisemitism carried out by far-right elements, including the Tacuara Nationalist Movement.

Eichmann with covered eyes led to El AI plane, on the way to Israel.

Eichmann then was taken to a fortified police station at Yagur, where he spent nine months.

The Israelis were unwilling to take him to trial based solely on the evidence in documents and witness testimony, so the prisoner was subject to daily interrogations, the transcripts of which totalled over 3,500 pages.

Photo: Eichmann in a prison yard in Israel in 1961.

When additional information was brought forward that forced him into admitting what he had done, Eichmann would insist he had no authority in the Nazi hierarchy and was only following orders.

Inspector Less noted that Eichmann did not seem to realize the enormity of his crimes and showed no remorse.

"There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders", Eichmann wrote. "I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty."

Eichmann's trial before a special tribunal of the Jerusalem District Court began on 11 April 1961. The legal basis of the charges against him was the 1950 Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, under which he was indicted on 15 criminal charges.

Eichmann sat inside a bulletproof glass booth to protect him from assassination attempts. The building was modified to allow journalists to watch the trial on closed-circuit television, and 750 seats were available in the auditorium itself.

The prosecution case was presented over the course of 56 days, involving hundreds of documents and 112 witnesses (many of them Holocaust survivors).

Some of the evidence submitted by the prosecution took the form of depositions made by leading Nazis.

The prosecution proved that Eichmann had visited places where exterminations had taken place, including Chełmno extermination camp, Auschwitz, and Minsk (where he witnessed a mass shooting of Jews), and therefore was aware that the deportees were being killed.

Jewish survivors stand in an opened mass grave among the exhumed bodies of the victims of a mass shooting in Biala Podlaska.

Observers such as Moshe Pearlman and Hannah Arendt have remarked on Eichmann's ordinariness in appearance and flat affect. In his testimony, he insisted he had no choice but to follow orders, as he was bound by an oath of loyalty to Hitler.

On the last day of the examination, he stated that he was guilty of arranging the transports, but he did not feel guilty for the consequences.

When Hausner produced evidence that Eichmann had stated in 1945 that "I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have 5 million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction" ...

... he said he meant "enemies of the Reich" such as the Soviets.

During later examination by the judges, he admitted he meant the Jews, and said the remark was an accurate reflection of his opinion at the time.

The trial adjourned on 14 August, and the verdict was read on 12 December. Eichmann was convicted on 15 counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in a criminal organization.

In addition to being found guilty of crimes against Jews, he was convicted for crimes against Poles, Slovenes and Gypsies. He was found guilty of membership in three organizations that had been declared criminal at the Nuremberg trials: the Gestapo, the SD, and the SS.

When considering the sentence, the judges concluded that Eichmann had not merely been following orders, but believed in the Nazi cause wholeheartedly and had been a key perpetrator of the genocide.

On 15 December 1961, Eichmann was sentenced to death by hanging.

Appeal hearings took place between 22 and 29 March 1962. Eichmann's wife Vera flew to Israel and saw him for the last time at the end of April. On 29 May, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal and upheld the District Court's judgement on all counts.

Eichmann immediately petitioned Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi for clemency. In addition, Eichmann's wife and brothers also wrote to Ben-Zvi requesting clemency.

Prominent people such as Hugo Bergmann, Pearl S. Buck, Martin Buber, and Ernst Simon spoke up on his behalf.

Ben-Gurion called a special cabinet meeting to resolve the issue.

The cabinet decided not to recommend to President Ben-Zvi that Eichmann be granted clemency, and Ben-Zvi rejected the clemency petition.

At 8:00 p.m. on 31 May, Eichmann was informed that his final appeal had been denied.

Eichmann was hanged at a prison in Ramla hours later. The hanging, scheduled for midnight at the end of 31 May, was slightly delayed and thus took place a few minutes past 12:00 a.m. on 1 June 1962.

His last words were:

"Long live Germany. Long live Argentina. Long live Austria. (...) I greet my wife, my family and my friends. I am ready. We'll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in God."

Eichmann's youngest son Ricardo says he does not agree that his father's "following orders" argument excuses his actions and notes how his father's lack of remorse caused "difficult emotions" for the Eichmann family.

He is now a professor of archaeology in Germany.

The execution of Adolf Eichmann remains the only time that Israel has enacted a death sentence.

"To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing."

facesofauschwitz.com

"When I see the images before my eyes, it all comes back to me… Corpses, corpses, corpses. Shot, gassed, decaying corpses. They seemed to pop out of the ground when a grave was opened. It was a delirium of blood."

- Eichmann's notes for a memoir, "The False Gods".

It's important to talk about the perpetrators, but I'd like to ask you to take a minute to read the stories of the victims.

The Holocaust affected millions of humans beings - not vague numbers. And that's why the project exists: to remind us of that.

facesofauschwitz.com