Nazi hunters adolf eichmann biography
Home / Political Leaders & Public Figures / Nazi hunters adolf eichmann biography
In 1920, Eichmann's family moved back to Germany.His education incomplete, he left school in 1921. The plan was never implemented
In Poland, which had the largest Jewish population in Europe (3.35 million) Heydrich and Eichmann ordered the Jews to be rounded up and forced into ghettos and labour camps. Thanks to Lothar Herrmann, a blind Jewish refugee who had fled to Argentina after being imprisoned in Dachau, they learned of his whereabouts and began planning one of history’s most ambitious captures.
Eichmann thus became one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich and would remain head of IV D/B4 for the remainder of the Reich’s existence.
With the outbreak of war, Eichmann oversaw a fundamental change in policy – from "voluntary" emigration to forced deportation. In 1948 he obtained a landing permit for Argentina, but did not use it immediately.
At the beginning of 1950, Eichmann went to Italy, where he posed as a refugee named Ricardo Klement.
It was during this phase of his career that Eichmann presented his Madagascar Plan, proposing to deport European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of east Africa. His subsequent activities and responsibility for the death of millions of Jews following the decision to implement the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" in 1941 have been well documented elsewhere.
Eichmann arranged the infamous Wannsee Conference held in January 1942 and acted as its recording secretary.
For the next ten years, he worked in several odd jobs in the Buenos Aires area (from factory foreman, to junior water engineer and professional rabbit farmer).
David Cesarani, William Heinemann, 2004.
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2007
.
Mossad assembled a “snatch team”—most of whom had seen their entire families wiped out during the Holocaust—to abduct Eichmann.Their goal was not just to capture him, but to get him back to Israel where he could be tried publicly for his crimes.
He arrived by ship in Argentina on 14 July 1950. The trial was a significant step in conveying the Holocaust to Israeli and Jewish students, a process that reached fruition in the eighties and nineties, in the form of school delegations to Poland; to the sites of the former ghettoes and camps; and with youngsters writing essays about their own roots. His family joined him in Argentina soon after, living a relatively quiet life as Eichmann attempted to support himself at a variety of jobs.
But though both West German and American intelligence operations received tips on Eichmann, they didn’t follow up on the leads. Eichmann had social ties to other escaped Nazis, and even sat down for an extensive interview with a pro-Nazi journalist, to whom he complained that he had made a mistake by not murdering all of Europe’s Jews.
Rumors of Eichmann’s activities in Argentina made their way to the United States, Europe and Israel.
The Nazis also ordered the establishment of Jewish administrative councils (Judenräte)within the ghettos to implement Nazi policies and decrees.
"The Führer has ordered the physical extermination of the Jews,"Heydrich told Eichmann, who later reported this statement during his trial after the war.
SS Einsatzgruppen in occupied areas of the Soviet Union now turned their full attention to the mass murder of Jews.
Nearly a hundred thousand Austrian Jews managed to leave with most turning over all their worldly possessions to Eichmann's office, a concept so successful that similar offices were established in Prague and Berlin.
In 1939 Eichmann returned to Berlin where he was appointed the head of Gestapo Section IV D4 of the new Reich Main Security Office (RSHA).
Renowned poets and writers have written about the trial, including: Eli Wiesel, Primo Levi, Nathan Alterman, and Haim Gouri. One of his primary responsibilities was to solve the endless logistical problems involved in transporting Jews to the death camps. He was found guilty on all counts, sentenced to death and hanged at Ramleh Prison, 31 May 1962.
Wisliceny reported that Eichmann had once said "that the knowledge of having five million Jews on his conscience gave him such extraordinary satisfaction that he would leap into his grave laughing.” Eichmann’s version of his wording was slightly less triumphalist: “I estimate that the war had cost five million Jews.
With the help of a Franciscan friar who had connections with Archbishop Alois Hudal, Eichmann obtained an `International Committee of the Red Cross’ humanitarian passport and an Argentinean visa. The most significant of these was the trial of the Auschwitz criminals, launched in 1963 in Frankfurt am Main.