Adolf Eichmann Jewish roots. Biography

Nazi recruit

As the economic depression in Europe and throughout the world intensified, Eichmann quit his job entirely and went to an SS training camp near Dachau, twenty miles from Munich, next to a then little-known concentration camp.

Here Eichmann underwent an intensive training course, after which he was left with scars on his elbows and knees for the rest of his life - the result of overcoming obstacles with barbed wire and broken glass. “During this year, I got rid of any feeling of pain,” he later boasted. After completing the training course, Eichmann voluntarily entered the SD - the SS security service. In 1935, by order of SD chief Heinrich Himmler, he created the so-called “Jewish Museum” - a department whose sole task was to collect information about Jewish business and real estate in Germany and Austria.

Eichmann turned out to be a surprisingly capable student when it came to the “mortal enemies of the Reich.” He carefully studied Jewish traditions, religion, and way of life and soon became an unsurpassed expert in this field.

Taste of power

In 1938, when Germany annexed Austria without firing a shot, Adolf Eichmann got his first taste of unlimited power over people. He headed the Office of Jewish Emigration in Vienna.

Skillfully combining cunning and cruelty, Eichmann sowed terror among the Jewish population of the ancient capital of the empire. Rabbis were dragged out of their houses into the streets and their heads were shaved; synagogues were razed to the ground; shops and apartments owned by Jews were completely robbed. They took away everything they had from the victims, thrust into their hands a passport with the mark “Yu” (“Yude” - Jew) and ordered them to find a country willing to accept them within two weeks. If they failed, there was only one path before them - to a concentration camp.

In Vienna, the son of a modest accountant fully learned what a luxurious life is. He settled in a beautiful mansion that previously belonged to one of the members of the Rothschild banking dynasty, ate in the best restaurants, drank unique wines from ancient cellars and even took himself a beautiful mistress - just for prestige, although he had been married for three years.

By 1939, Eichmann found himself among the few close associates of Reinhard Heydrich, a man with an iron heart, and received the rank of captain. Heydrich was one of the selected senior SS ranks to whom Hitler entrusted the task of the future "cleansing of Europe" of Jews and other undesirable elements. Heydrich had an extraordinary mind and devilish insight. He noticed Eichmann's brilliant success in transforming Vienna from a "Jew-free" city to a "Jew-free" city, and realized that he would make an excellent apprentice. In a recommendation addressed to Himmler, Heydrich wrote that Eichmann was capable of “leading the entire Jewish direction.” And by that time Eichmann had already developed his own concept of a practical solution to the Jewish question. He called it "The Final Solution." Himmler could only dream of a better worker.

Factory of death

When the war broke out, Poland was one of the first to be trampled. And Eichmann had a lot of work to do. A significant part of the Polish population were Jews, and the first centers of their extermination appeared here. These centers were not originally concentration camps. They were created as enterprises for the destruction of hundreds of thousands of people.

Obsessed

In 1942, in a villa in the cozy Berlin suburb of Wannsee, which previously belonged to a wealthy Jewish family, high-ranking officials of the Reich entered into a final and irrevocable alliance with their conscience. There was only one item on the agenda: “The final solution to the Jewish question in Europe.” Eichmann was also present at this meeting.

The Third Reich carried out the largest, most massive murder of people in the entire history of mankind. The extermination of Jews throughout Europe, their extermination in death camps, so much so that at first it did not arouse suspicion either among the victims themselves or in neutral countries, was masterfully organized. Eichmann rushed around Europe, requisitioning the trains necessary for military needs in order to send more and more “enemies of the Reich” to gas chambers and ovens.

Not since the times of medieval commanders who destroyed European nations with fire and sword has such diabolical power been concentrated in the hands of one person. More pragmatic SS officers believed that the extermination of Jews was a secondary matter, and the main task was to win the war. But not Eichmann. He constantly and persistently demanded new vehicles for his victims, new contingents of guards for concentration camps, new tanks of deadly gas for the cells.

Retribution

In 1957, a blind Jew living in the suburbs of Buenos Aires became very interested in a man named Ricardo Clement.

The fact is that the daughter of this old man met with a young man who called himself Nicholas Eichmann. In a conversation with her, he said that his father’s name was not Ricardo Clement, but Adolf Eichmann. This name, of course, meant nothing to the girl. But for her blind father it sounded like thunder on a clear day.

Soon this information landed on the desk of Nesser Harel, the founder of the Israeli secret service Mossad. Harel was able to obtain permission from David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the young Jewish state, to personally lead the operation to capture Eichmann and bring him to trial.

In 1958, a group of Israeli agents secretly arrived in Buenos Aires, but the Clement family had left two months earlier.

Only in December 1959, one of the Mossad agents managed to find out that Nicholas Eichmann worked here in the city, in a motorcycle repair shop. The agent tracked him down to a house in a bleak suburb of San Fernando.

The Israeli surveillance group immediately took Clement's house under surveillance. For several months, detectives observed a balding man with glasses, a minor employee of a local Mercedes-Benz branch. But they were not completely sure that it was Eichmann.

And on March 24, 1960, this man came home with a huge bouquet of flowers. Israeli agents were in seventh heaven: a check showed that this date was the birthday of Eichmann's wife. Like any exemplary husband, he decided to present her with flowers on this occasion.

At eight o'clock in the evening of May 2, 1960, Adolf Eichmann fell into the hands of Mossad agents. They tied him up, put him in the back seat of the car and took him to a pre-prepared place.

The first thing the Israelis did was check the captured man's armpits for the tattooed number that was assigned to any member of the top echelon of the SS. There was no tattoo, but in its place was a purple scar.

Ricardo Clement was not indignant or protested. He calmly looked at his captors and declared in pure German: “I am Adolf Eichmann. Are you Israelis?”

Ten days later, he was already on board an El-Al airline flight bound for Israel. He was taken from Argentina, drugged and passed off as a dying Jew who wanted to die in his homeland - the resemblance to a Jew played a cruel joke on him for the last time. The plane had not yet touched the landing strip in Tel Aviv, and Ben-Gurion had already announced in the Knesset that Eichmann had been arrested and would be tried in Israel for war crimes.

If anyone expected to see a bloodthirsty monster with terrifying fangs in the dock, he was endlessly disappointed. An ordinary balding man appeared before the court, only his eyes still burned fanatically with fire. Eichmann was placed in a cell with bulletproof glass - the Israelis were afraid that he would be killed too soon.

At the trial, which lasted from April 11 to August 14, 1961, there was no repentance, hostility, or sorrow on Eichmann’s part. Eichmann claimed that he did not understand why the Jewish people hated him: after all, he was simply following orders. Responsibility for the extermination of the Jews, in his opinion, must be borne by someone else.

On December 1, 1961, Eichmann was sentenced to death. On May 31, 1962, he rejected a Protestant priest's call to repent and was taken to death row. Climbing onto the scaffold, he said: “Long live Germany! Long live Argentina! Long live Austria! My whole life is connected with these three countries, and I will never forget them. I salute my wife, family and friends. I was obliged to follow the rules war and served my banner. I am ready." Eichmann's ashes were burned and scattered over the sea.

Adolf Eichmann did not have the mystical charm of Hitler, the brilliant mind of Heydrich, or the oratory of Goebbels; he was a completely ordinary person who put service to his country and, as a result, unquestioning execution of orders at the head of everything. Already looking death in the face and looking back, he regretted only one thing - that he had not completed his task to the end.

Eichmann's remarks:

“I work not for money, but for ideological reasons. I have no ambitions, I just want to do my job and help create what you want: a secure future for the Reich and, as a consequence, the future of our children.”

“Although there is no blood on my hands, I will, of course, be found guilty of complicity in murder. But be that as it may, I am internally free. I know that I am about to be condemned to death. I don’t ask for mercy, I don’t care.” I served my country faithfully, I have nothing to be ashamed of."

About Eichmann:

"He bathed his soul in blood."
Unknown historian

“They made a monster out of this man; in fact, he is nothing more than an ordinary ministerial clerk.”
Wolfgang Benz, Berlin historian

And a comment:
The real White Devil!

Do you think love only destroys heroes? No, it destroys villains too, and the main reason for the capture of the biggest Nazi criminal discovered after the war, Adolf Eichmann, was precisely love. His love for his wife and children. Well, and his amazing negligence, of course.

And it was not the Mossad, the CIA, the BND, or any intelligence agency that found Eichmann. And not even the “Nazi hunter” Simon Wiesenthal. Eichmann was found by a bored and curious man who had never seen Eichmann, if only because he was blind in both eyes.

On December 15, 1961, ex-SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann was read a verdict in which he was informed that he had been found guilty on all charges and was sentenced to death by hanging.

There is no point in retelling the trial of Eichmann and the operation that preceded it to kidnap him - all this is described quite widely. But how exactly Eichmann’s whereabouts were discovered is interesting.

Eichmann's wife, Veronica Liebl, was born in the Czech village of Mlada Ceske Budejovice (which is now part of Prague) on April 3, 1909 into a wealthy Czech German family. Where and how Veronica met Adolf Eichmann, history is silent. It has only been established that they began to meet regularly in the early 30s.

All members of Veronica's family were convinced Nazis, and Eichmann hired her two brothers to work in the secret police - the elder Franz rose to the rank of head of the Gestapo in the Czech city of Hradec Kralove, and the younger, Matthias, specialized in the discovery and confiscation of Jewish property.

On October 21, 1934, Eichmann turned to the SS leadership with a request to obtain consent to marry. The issue was resolved positively, consent was received, and the couple got married on March 21, 1935 in Berlin.

In the second half of 1935, Eichmann began working in the newly organized “Jews” department in the SD Headquarters. During this period, the department was faced with the task of facilitating the speedy forced emigration of Jews from Germany. Then in 1938, Eichmann was transferred to the SD office in Vienna, where he achieved the creation of a central institution for the emigration of Jews in Vienna, after which the registration of their departure from the country turned into an assembly line.

In April 1939, after the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Eichmann was transferred to Prague, where he continued to work on “solving the question of the Jews.” Since the beginning of the war, Veronica and her three sons: Klaus Eichmann (born in 1936), Horst Eichmann (born in 1940) and Dieter Eichmann (born in 1942), lived almost constantly in Prague in the house previously belonged to an emigrated Jewish family.

As the No. 1 man for the “Final Solution,” Eichmann was with his family in fits and starts, devoting himself to building concentration camps and exterminating the Jews. Towards the end of the war, fearing that he would still have to answer for his crimes, Eichmann moved his family to the house of Veronica’s parents, where he last appeared on April 29, 1945. Then he said goodbye to them, handed his wife and each of his three sons a capsule with hydrocyanic acid , and he himself with the remnants of the SS troops moved to the mountains.

At the same time, by organizing the confiscation of Jewish valuables, Eichmann could easily make a fortune for himself. But he was a selfless fighter for the idea, so in addition to capsules with poison, he left the family only a bag of flour, about 12 kilograms.

Skipping all the vicissitudes of Eichmann’s wanderings across Europe, let’s jump straight to July 14, 1950, when Adolf Eichmann disembarked from the steamer Giovanna C in Buenos Aires. All this time, Veronica Eichmann, without changing her last name, lived in her parents' house. In 1947, she went to court to officially confirm the death of her husband, based on the testimony of Charles Liebl, who claimed to have seen with his own eyes how Eichmann was killed in a shootout on a Prague street on April 30, 1945. But when the judge learned that Charles Liebl was Veronica Eichmann's cousin, he rejected the application.

In the spring of 1951, Veronica received a letter from Argentina, in which a certain Ricardo Clementa claimed that he was “the uncle of your children, the one you thought was dead, and he loves you.” A correspondence began, and on August 15, 1952, Veronica and her children arrived in Argentina, announced to the children that Ricardo was their father’s cousin, and she was marrying him.

At the same time, neither Veronica Eichmann nor their children changed their surname “Eichmann”. Moreover, when their fourth son, Ricardo Francisco, was born in Argentina in 1955 (the child’s second name was given in honor of the Franciscan monks, with the help of whom Eichmann escaped persecution), he was also recorded as “Eichmann.” At the time of the birth of their fourth child, Veronica was 45 years old, Adolf was 50.

The family did not live well: they opened a laundry, then a store, at one time they tried to raise rabbits and chickens, but nothing worked out for them. In the end, Eichmann realized that he would not be able to get rich, and he became a clerk at the Mercedes-Benz plant in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. He didn't change his appearance.

In Buenos Aires, next to the Eichmanns, an emigrant from Germany, Lothar Hermann, lived since 1938. A socialist and half-Jew, he spent several months in the Dachau concentration camp, after which he quickly understood everything and moved overseas. He lost his sight already in Argentina, and this was a consequence of beatings by the Gestapo.

When Hermann's daughter, Sylvia, began dating a young German named Klaus Eichmann in 1956, his last name seemed familiar to Lothar Hermann.

After asking the young man (who, by the way, was not at all embarrassed that he was dating a “quarter Jewish”) about who his parents were, where they lived in Europe, and how they got to Argentina, Lothar began to suspect that the father of her daughter’s boyfriend - this is the same Adolf Eichmann.

Hermann wrote about his suspicions in Germany to the Prosecutor General of Hesse, Fritz Bauer, received from him a photograph of Eichmann and, with the help of his daughter, became convinced that this was the same person. And then Lothar Hermann told the Germans Eichmann’s new name: Ricardo Clementa, and his address: Buenos Aires, Olivos district, Chacabuco street, 4261.

On September 19, 1957, Prosecutor Bauer provided the information received from Hermann about the exact location of Eichmann in Argentina to the head of the Israeli delegation at the negotiations on reparations in Germany, Dr. Schneer. Like, if you need Eichmann, then here he is - come and get it. Schneer immediately passed this information to the Mossad, where they simply did not believe it. “It can’t be that Eichmann was so easily identified by some blind half-Jew,” they objected, “and it can’t be that Eichmann was such a poor man.”

In May 2007, this Eichmann passport was transferred as an exhibit to the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires, in the name of Ricardo Clement, which was discovered in the judicial archives of Buenos Aires. He got there from the police, where Veronica Eichmann filed a statement about the disappearance of her husband in May 1960.

Subsequently, Veronica Eichmann lived in solitude in Argentina, avoided everyone and died in 1997. She sent her two younger sons to receive education in Germany, where they remained.

Nowadays, one professor of archeology at the University of Tübingen in southwestern Germany gathers his students every new academic year and announces to them: “I am Ricardo Eichmann, Adolf Eichmann was my father. If you think this means I'm a Nazi, then you better leave now." But Ricardo Francisco does not change his last name.

Lothar Hermann received the $10,000 prize announced by the World Jewish Congress for information about Eichmann's whereabouts only 12 years after Eichmann's kidnapping, in 1972, just before his death. Israel for a long time refused to admit that it was Hermann’s information that caused the discovery of Eichmann, attributing all the credit either to the Mossad or to Wiesenthal, but it is not clear to whom.

This is the “unknown about the known.”

Adolf Eichmann left school at the age of fifteen without graduating. He joined the nascent Nazi party and in it found his goal - the extermination of millions of Jews in the death camps of war-torn Europe.

The larger crime in human history remains the Holocaust - the systematic, meticulous, deliberate extermination of 6 million Jews and the murder of 6 million Russians, Poles, Gypsies and other “inferiors” who did not correspond to the perverted idea of ​​a racially pure world ruled by its thugs.

The conquered peoples died at the hands of unparalleled villains - drunken Lithuanian and Latvian Quislings, intoxicated by the impunity of policemen who, in the Nazi-occupied eastern lands, shot their own compatriots with machine guns; Nazi henchmen who gassed the cells of Auschwitz and Treblinka; seasoned Berlin criminals who executed their victims in the basements of the main imperial security office (Gestapo) on Prinz Albrechtstrasse, and other scum of humanity.

Wherever these motley killers come from and wherever they do their dirty work, they all bear equal responsibility for the crimes against humanity that were committed in those 12 years when Hitler was in power in Germany.

In the literal sense of the word, Eichmann's hands were never stained with blood. But it was in his monstrously perverted brain that the plan for the extermination of millions of Jews was born.

Author of the criminal system

But it was necessary to have cruel prudence, infinitely perverted logic, which is devoid of any human feelings like love or kindness, in order to transfer the maniacal theory of the Holocaust from the depths of inhumane Nazi philosophy into practice and bring it to life. Adolf Eichmann turned out to have such abilities.

He rightfully earned himself a place in hell next to the most cruel villains and criminals who left their bloody mark on history. And although his uniform was never stained with blood, he himself never pulled the trigger, it is no exaggeration to say that Adolf Eichmann is the most sinister killer of all times.

It was Eichmann who forced trains with suicide bombers to go to the hell of concentration camps on a strict schedule. He developed a system called the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, he attracted human resources and organized the production of equipment to implement this diabolical system. At the end of the war, he was among those high-ranking Nazis who managed to escape and thereby escape justice.

Adolf Eichmann was born in 1902 in the German city of Solingen. He spent his childhood in Austria, because his search for work brought his father, an accountant, to Linz.

Dad, Karl Eichmann, maintained an atmosphere of rigor, frugality and order in the family. Nevertheless, the boy Adolf studied carelessly and preferred to spend his time in idleness. He loved to talk with former soldiers of the Kaiser's army who fought on the fronts of the First World War, eagerly listening to their stories about battles and battles, their reasoning that politicians, not soldiers, were to blame for the defeat of Germany.

Later, when the shoots of Nazism began to grow violently in both Germany and Austria, the young man readily sided with those who believed that the defeat of Germany was the result of an international Jewish conspiracy.

By the age of 20, young Eichmann worked as a traveling agent for one of the oil companies. But he was increasingly overwhelmed by the desire to link his fate with Hitler’s swastika. On April 1, 1932, he joined the Austrian Nazi Party.

Nazi recruit

As the economic depression in Europe and throughout the world intensified, Adolf Eichmann abandoned his work altogether and went to an SS training camp near Dachau, 20 miles from Munich, next to a then little-known concentration camp.

There, Eichmann underwent intensive training, after which he was left with lifelong scars on his elbows and knees - the result of overcoming obstacles with barbed wire and broken glass. “During this year I got rid of any feeling of pain,” he later boasted. After completing the course, Eichmann voluntarily entered the SD - the SS security service. In 1935, by order of the chief of the SD, he created the so-called “Jewish Museum” - a department whose sole task was to collect information about Jewish business and real estate in Germany and Austria.

Adolf Eichmann, so untalented at school, turned out to be a surprisingly capable student when it came to the “mortal enemies of the Reich.” He carefully studied Jewish traditions, religion, and way of life and soon became an unsurpassed expert in this field.

Taste of power

1938 - when Germany annexed Austria without firing a shot, Eichmann got his first taste of unlimited power over people. He became head of the Office of Jewish Emigration in Vienna.

Skillfully combining cunning and cruelty, Adolf Eichmann sowed terror among the Jewish population of the ancient capital of the empire. Rabbis were thrown out of their houses into the streets and their heads were shaved; synagogues were razed to the ground; shops and apartments owned by Jews were completely robbed. They took away everything they had from the victims, thrust into their hands a passport with the mark “Yu” (“Yude” - Jew) and ordered them to find a country willing to accept them within two weeks. If they failed, there was only one way in front of them - to a concentration camp.

In Vienna, the son of a modest accountant fully experienced a luxurious life. He moved into a beautiful mansion, which had previously belonged to one of the members of the Rothschild banking dynasty, ate in the best restaurants, drank unique wines from ancient cellars, and even took himself a beautiful mistress - just for prestige, although he had already been married for three years.

1939 - Adolf Eichmann was among the few close associates of Reinhard Heydrich (“Hangman Heydrich,” as he would later be called) and received the rank of captain. Heydrich was one of the selected senior SS ranks to whom the Fuhrer entrusted the task of the future “cleansing of Europe” from Jews and other undesirable elements.

He noticed Eichmann's brilliant success in transforming Vienna from a “Jew-free” city to a “Jew-free” city, and realized that he would make an excellent apprentice. In a recommendation addressed to Himmler, Heydrich wrote that Adolf Eichmann was capable of “leading the entire Jewish direction.” And by that time Eichmann had already developed his own concept of a practical solution to the Jewish question. He called it “The Final Solution.”

Factory of death

When the war began, Poland was one of the first to be trampled. And the atrocities began. A significant part of the Polish population are Jews, and the first centers of their extermination appeared there. These centers were not originally concentration camps. They were created as enterprises for the destruction of hundreds of thousands of people.

The new department under the leadership of Eichmann, which received the short designation “ID-IV” (in SS circles it was simply called “Eichmann’s department”), first of all set about creating ghettos in the largest Polish cities - Warsaw and Lodz. According to Adolf Eichmann, disease and hunger in these damned places were supposed to contribute to the extermination of the Jews in order to save ammunition so expensive for the Reich.

Eichmann took personal control of experiments with mobile “gas chambers,” when Jews were driven into a closed truck and killed with exhaust fumes. He also came up with the idea of ​​​​creating a death camp in the south, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, which became Armageddon for the Jews.

1941 - when Hitler invaded the USSR, a huge field of activity opened up for Eichmann, already a lieutenant colonel, in the field of exterminating “inferior races.” The “gas chambers” turned out to be ineffective here. Mass executions of Jews and Slavs took a lot of time and required material costs. In addition, as it turned out, this procedure had a bad effect on the psyche of the performers.

Adolf Eichmann persuaded his superiors to use more effective methods of murder, in which the hair, gold teeth, and fat deposits of the victims could be used after their death. He used Zyklon-B, a gas that was used to kill 10,000 people a day in Auschwitz. For this purpose, they used gas chambers equipped for baths. Eichmann carefully counted the number of those killed, displaying side by side the figures for the benefits received. He also scrupulously took into account every piece of soap made from the melted fat of people killed in concentration camps.

Obsessed

1942 - in a villa in the cozy Berlin suburb of Wannsee, which previously belonged to a wealthy Jewish family, the Nazis entered into a final and irrevocable alliance with the devil. There was only one item on the agenda: “The final solution to the Jewish question in Europe.” Adolf Eichmann was also at this meeting.

“” carried out the largest, most massive murder of people in the entire history of mankind. The extermination of Jews throughout Europe, their extermination in death camps, so much so that at first it did not arouse suspicion either among the victims themselves or in neutral countries, was masterfully organized. Eichmann roamed around Europe, requisitioning the trains necessary for military needs in order to send more and more “enemies of the Reich” to gas chambers and ovens.

Not since the times of the generals of the Middle Ages, who destroyed European nations with fire and sword, has such diabolical power been concentrated in the hands of one person. More pragmatic SS officers believed that the extermination of Jews was a secondary matter, and the main task was to win the war. But not Eichmann. All the time, he stubbornly demanded new vehicles for his victims, new contingents of guards for concentration camps, new tanks of deadly gas for the cells.

1944 - when Allied troops were approaching the borders of Germany, Adolf Eichmann paid special attention to Hungary. This country had the status of an ally of Germany, and for the time being, 800,000 Hungarian Jews remained relatively safe. Eichmann took this fact as a personal insult. He went to Budapest to personally organize their transfer to concentration camps. From mid-May to July 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were loaded into train cars and sent to their deaths. As Eichmann later said, this was one of the most joyful periods of his life.

Eichmann's unique characteristic was his sincere belief in the rightness of his cause. He considered himself a loyal servant of Nazi ideas, who, like a member of a monastic order, completely devoted his life to fulfilling the mission entrusted to him.

The years have left their mark on both his appearance and his behavior. This was no longer the same riotous Eichmann, who boastfully rode through the streets of Vienna in a luxurious Rothschild limousine, terrifying the unfortunate rabbis. By the end of the war, he had lost weight, looked tired and gloomy, but his eyes constantly burned with a fanatical fire. He despised everyone who tried to hide what was being done in the name of National Socialism.

However, the collapse, the possibility of which Eichmann never wanted to admit, was inexorably approaching. After intense Allied bombing, most of the railway lines in Europe were destroyed. The death camps located in Poland were liberated or completely destroyed.

1944, October - Eichmann was forced to leave Budapest along with hundreds of thousands of refugees. Returning to burning Berlin, he reported to Himmler that, according to his calculations, 4 million Jews were exterminated in death camps and another 2 million died at the hands of punitive detachments operating in Russia.

Eichmann was glad that he was able to achieve so much. The only thing that bothered him was that a considerable part of the work was still unfinished.

As one historian noted, he soaked his soul in blood.

Time to pay the bills

In the chaos of the final days of the Third Reich, Eichmann disappeared. In April 1945, together with a group of the same fanatics, he went to the mountainous regions of the Austrian Tyrol, where he intended to put together a detachment for partisan struggle against the Allied occupation forces.

But on the very day when the group reached the mountains, Eichmann's companions demanded that he leave them. His reputation, his black glory, as they say, ran ahead of him. The army officers, realizing that collapse had come, did not at all want to be covered with the same black paint. So Eichmann, with weapons and a small supply of food, had to retire along a forest path, accompanied by an adjutant. They were lost in the turmoil that then gripped Germany.

There was a bounty on Adolf Eichmann's head. Ten former prisoners of a death camp in Poland created a special group whose sole purpose was to catch Eichmann and bring him to trial. Meanwhile, Eichmann, together with his adjutant, was able to make his way through the whole of Bavaria, dressed in the uniform of a Luftwaffe corporal.

Twice Eichmann ended up in American hands. The first time they blithely assigned him to look after a car wash, he ran away to Munich. Captured a second time, Eichmann claimed to have served as a lieutenant in the SS combat units.

In the Oberdachstätten camp in Silesia, Eichmann led a fairly tolerable existence. However, soon reports began to arrive there about the establishment of a tribunal in Nuremberg to try war criminals. These messages were full of words: “Eichmann”, “villain”, “organizer of mass murders”. Realizing that his identification was only a matter of time, Eichmann feverishly began to look for the possibility of another escape. He succeeded in January 1946, when he worked in a team of road repairmen. He settled in the remote town of Celle, where he lived for 4 years under the name Otto Heniger.

Eichmann understood that he could not stay in Germany: by 1950, the name Eichmann and the concept of “extermination of the Jews” merged together. With the help of ODESSA, an underground organization of former SS men, he obtained false documents and went to South America, where he hid for many years under the protection of old comrades. His wife, Vera Eichmann, and both of their sons arrived in Argentina in 1952, also using false documents.

Eichmann had no trace of any remorse, no remorse for what he had done during the reign of the Third Reich.

Retribution

In 1957, a blind Jew who lived in the suburbs of Buenos Aires became very interested in a man named Ricardo Clement.

The fact is that the daughter of this old man met with a young man who called himself Nicholas Eichmann. In a conversation with her, he said that his father’s name was not Ricardo Clement, but Adolf Eichmann. This name, of course, meant nothing to the girl. But for her blind father it sounded like thunder on a clear day.

Soon this information landed on the desk of Nesser Harel, the founder of the Israeli secret service Mossad. Harel was able to obtain permission from David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the young Jewish state, to personally lead the operation to capture Eichmann and bring him to trial.

1958 - a group of selected Israeli agents secretly arrived in Buenos Aires, but the Clement family left two months earlier.

Only in December 1959 did one of the Mossad agents manage to find out that Nicholas Eichmann worked here in the city, in a motorcycle repair shop. The agent tracked him down to a house in a bleak suburb of San Fernando.

The Israeli surveillance group immediately took Clement's house under surveillance. For several months, detectives observed a balding man with glasses, a minor employee of a local Mercedes-Benz branch. However, they were not completely sure that it was Eichmann.

1960, March 24 - this man came home with a huge bouquet of flowers. The Israeli agents were in seventh heaven: the check showed that this date was the birthday of Eichmann’s wife. Like any exemplary husband, he decided to present her with flowers on this occasion.

At eight o'clock in the evening of May 2, 1960, Adolf Eichmann fell into the hands of the avenging angels from the Mossad. He was tied up, placed in the back seat of a car and taken to a pre-prepared place.

The first thing the Israelis did was check the captured man's armpits for the tattooed number that was assigned to any member of the top echelon of the SS. There was no tattoo, but in its place was a purple scar.

Ricardo Clement was not indignant or protested. He calmly looked at his captors and declared in pure German: “I am Adolf Eichmann.”

10 days later he was already on board an El-Al airline plane bound for Israel. He was smuggled out of Argentina, drugged and dressed in a pilot's uniform. The plane had not yet touched the landing strip in Tel Aviv, and Ben-Gurion had already announced in the Knesset that Eichmann had been arrested and would be tried in Israel for war crimes.

If anyone expected to see a bloodthirsty monster with terrifying fangs in the dock, he was endlessly disappointed. The most banal embodiment of villainy appeared before the court in the guise of a bald, crooked man, placed in a cell with bulletproof glass.

At the trial, which lasted from April 11 to August 14, 1961, there was no repentance, hostility, or sorrow on Eichmann's part. Adolf Eichmann claimed that he did not understand why the Jewish people hated him: after all, he was simply following orders. Responsibility for the extermination of the Jews, in his opinion, must be borne by someone else.

1961, December 1 - Eichmann was sentenced to death. 1962, May 31 - he rejected the call of a Protestant priest addressed to him to repent, and he was taken to death row. Climbing onto the scaffold, he said: “Long live Germany! Long live Argentina! Long live Austria! My whole life is connected with these three countries, and I will never forget them. I salute my wife, family and friends. I was obliged to follow the rules of war and served my banner. I'm ready".

Adolf Eichmann was burned and the ashes of this monster were scattered over the sea. Not a single prayer was said on earth in memory of him.

ed. shrorm777.ru

Jewish question. Born into a family of an accountant. In 1914, the family moved to the city of Lina (Austria). He attended high school, but did not receive a certificate; he studied at a technical school for two years, majoring in mechanics, but did not receive a diploma. Having changed several jobs, in 1928–32. worked as a traveling agent for an American oil company. In 1933, under the influence of one of the leaders of the Austrian Nazis, the future head of the Main Security Directorate of the Third Reich, E. Kaltenbrunner, he joined the National Socialist Party (see Nazism) of Austria. In 1933 he was fired from his job, in the same year he moved to Germany and was drafted into the Austrian SS unit (see SS and SD). Then he served in the Dachau concentration camp.

In 1934 he joined the SD Main Directorate in Berlin. He was an employee of the department that dealt with the activities of the Freemasons. In 1935 he moved to the newly created Jewish department, where he was considered a major specialist on the Jewish question. He took an active part in meetings devoted to the Jewish question, and was one of the main initiators of the measures that the SS and SD used against the Jews. During this period, the leaders of Nazi Germany were interested in a sharp increase in the emigration of Jews to other countries; The SS and SD were instructed to develop a set of measures that would force Jews into mass emigration. In the fall of 1937, Eichmann was sent to Eretz Israel and Egypt. He came to the conclusion that increased emigration of Jews from Germany to Eretz Israel was undesirable for the Third Reich, since Germany was not interested and should not contribute to the creation of a Jewish state. He wanted to expand his knowledge regarding Jews, even tried to study Yiddish and Hebrew, and became acquainted with the activities of Zionist organizations.

After the Anschluss of Austria (March 13, 1938), Eichmann was sent to Vienna to organize the mass emigration of Jews there. He created a system of forced emigration, where Jews were forced to leave under the influence of persecution, beatings and abuse, as well as confiscation of their property and forcing the leaders of Jewish organizations to cooperate with the Nazi authorities. In Vienna on August 20, 1938, the central institution for Jewish emigration opened, under the direction of Eichmann. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Eichmann introduced a system of forced emigration into the territory of the Protectorate. On July 27, a central institution for the emigration of Jews (modeled on the Viennese one) was created in Prague, which was also led by Eichmann. After the creation in September 1939 of the Main Directorate of State Security under the leadership of Heydrich, one of the main parts of this institution became the Gestapo, the Jewish department of which was headed by Eichmann. In March 1941 the department was transformed into a special department for Jewish affairs (IV B4).

In 1939–40 Eichmann played a major role in the implementation of plans to expel Jews and Poles from occupied Polish lands, which were then annexed by the Third Reich. At the same time, he led the implementation of the so-called Nisko Plan - an attempt to concentrate a huge number of Jews in the Lublin area (“Lublin Reservation”; see Holocaust. Nazi policy of extermination of the Jewish people and stages of the Holocaust. Second stage). Eichmann's collaborators operated in all countries conquered by Germany, carrying out anti-Jewish measures in cooperation with local authorities.

In the spring of 1941, the policy of the Nazi leadership changed - Jewish emigration was prohibited. In May 1941, the term “final solution” to the Jewish question began to be used, implying the total extermination of the Jews of Europe. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War (June 22, 1941), the Nazis began to implement the “Final Solution.”

In November 1941, Eichmann was awarded the rank of SS Ober-Sturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel). He exercised central leadership over all operations for the deportation of European Jews to death camps, played an active role in the preparation and conduct of the Wannsee Conference and the implementation of its decisions on the extermination of Jews. He visited death camps several times, including Auschwitz, and knew the entire extermination process in detail. Representatives of Eichmann's department actively acted in the states dependent on Germany (Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria), encouraging local authorities to expel Jews. Eichmann was also responsible for the confiscation of Jewish property and the sterilization of persons intermarried with Jews and their descendants. Under the leadership of Eichmann, a “demonstration ghetto” was created in Theresienstadt (see Terezin) in order to deceive the world community, however, from there, 88 thousand people were deported to death camps, and 33 thousand died from inhuman conditions in the ghetto.

According to the testimony of many Nazis, including Eichmann's employees, he was fanatically devoted to the idea of ​​exterminating the Jews of Europe and even in a number of cases sabotaged the orders of G. Himmler if they could slow down the process of extermination of Jews or save individual victims. Thus, one of Eichmann’s closest collaborators, D. Wisliceny, wrote about Eichmann while in prison: “Based on my personal experience, I once again affirm that, although Eichmann acted on the orders of Hitler and Himmler, his personal participation in the extermination of European Jews was decisive, and he should be considered fully responsible for this, since it made it possible to circumvent Hitler’s order.”

At the end of the war, Eichmann was arrested by the Allies, but was not identified. He fled, hid, and in 1950, with the help of Vatican representatives, he left for Argentina. Settled in Buenos Aires with his wife and three children. In May 1960, Eichmann was tracked down and captured in Argentina by agents of the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad (full name X a-mosad le-modi'in u-le-tafkidim meyukhadim - 'Establishment for Intelligence and Special Operations'), which was headed by I. X ar'el. Eichmann was secretly brought to Israel and handed over to the police. At a Knesset meeting on May 22, Israeli Prime Minister D. Ben-Gurion announced that “Adolf Eichmann is in Israel and will soon be brought to justice.”

In Israel, Eichmann was immediately arrested by court order, and this order was periodically renewed. A specially created police department (institution 06) was involved in the investigation of Eichmann's activities. After the end of the investigation, legal adviser to the government G. X Ausner (1915–90) signed a 15-count indictment. Eichmann was accused of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and membership in criminal organizations (SS and SD, Gestapo). Crimes against the Jewish people included all types of persecution, including the arrest of millions of Jews, concentration of them in certain places, sending them to death camps, murder and confiscation of property. The indictment dealt not only with crimes against the Jewish people, but also with crimes against representatives of other nations: the deportation of millions of Poles, the arrest and sending to death camps of tens of thousands of Roma, the sending of 100 children from the Czech village of Lidice to the Lodz ghetto and their extermination in revenge for the murder of R. Heydrich by Czech underground fighters. The indictment was based on the 1950 Law for the Punishment of Nazi Criminals and Their Helpers.

On April 11, 1961, the Eichmann trial began in the Jerusalem District Court. The chairman of the court was a member of the Supreme Court M. Landoy, the judges were B. X Alevi (1910–66) and I. Rave. The prosecution was supported by a group of prosecutors led by G. X Ausner. The defense was led by German lawyer Dr. R. Servatius, who in the past defended a number of defendants during international trials of Nazi criminals in Nuremberg and other countries.

Immediately after the start of the trial, R. Servatius made a number of statements denying the legal competence of the Israeli court. He wrote that the three judges, who represented the Jewish people and were citizens of the State of Israel, would not be able to administer a fair trial in this case. He argued that Eichmann could not be tried in Israel since he had been kidnapped in Argentina, where he lived, and brought to Israel against his wishes. The law on the prosecution of Nazis and their collaborators was passed in 1950, and it is impossible to prosecute crimes committed before the adoption of this law, since the validity of the law cannot be applied retroactively. R. Servatius tried to prove that the crimes of which Eichmann is accused were committed outside the territory of the State of Israel and before the creation of the state.

On the prosecution side, more than 100 witnesses spoke at the trial and 1,600 documents were provided, most of which were signed by Eichmann. The testimony and documents presented by the prosecution fully showed all types of persecution: the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation, incitement to hatred of the Jewish minority, the looting of Jewish property, the imprisonment of Jews in ghettos and concentration camps, the deportation of the Jewish population of Europe to death camps. The prosecution revealed what happened to Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Nazi Germany. During the court hearings, the role of Eichmann, head of the Gestapo Department IV B4, was revealed at all stages of the “final solution” process. He exercised leadership and control over the sending of all trains with Jews to the death camps.

The defense did not try to cast doubt on the documents presented, but tried to prove that Eichmann was nothing more than a “cog” in a colossal apparatus of destruction and he only carried out the orders received. The court did not take this approach into account and rejected it decisively, pointing out that Eichmann completely identified himself with the work entrusted to him, pursued it with fanaticism, and in the last stage of the war the desire to destroy as many Jews as possible became an obsession. This was especially evident in 1944 in Hungary, when Eichmann showed particular cruelty in exterminating Jews, in some cases actually sabotaging Himmler’s orders.

On December 15, 1961, the court sentenced A. Eichmann to death, finding him guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, against humanity and a war criminal. Eichmann's lawyer appealed to the Supreme Court, which rejected it on May 29, 1962 and confirmed the verdict of the first instance. The Israeli President also rejected Eichmann's request for clemency. Eichmann was hanged in the city of Ramla on the night of May 31 to June 1, 1962. His body was burned and his ashes scattered over the Mediterranean Sea outside Israeli territorial waters.

The significance of the Eichmann trial is enormous not only for Jews. The trial was attended by numerous representatives of the international media. The verdict was perceived throughout the world as a triumph of historical justice. The Eichmann trial made a particular impression in Germany.

Citizens of Israel, especially young people, listening to the testimony of numerous witnesses, learned how the machine of destruction worked, how everything was done to make the slightest resistance impossible, and how, despite this entire perfect system of suppression of the individual, heroic uprisings broke out in the ghettos of Warsaw, Bialystok, death camps Sobibor, Treblinka, and hundreds of other places.

In prison, Eichmann kept diaries, which, by decision of the Israeli government, were closed for review and use. In 1999, Eichmann's son petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court for permission to publish the diaries.

On February 29, 2000, by order of the Israeli government, Eichmann's diaries were published. The diaries are a striking document in which one of the main criminals responsible for the Holocaust characterized it as follows: “I saw hell and the devil, death, I saw monstrous things. I witnessed destructive madness." In his diaries, Eichmann described the extermination of Jews in various European countries. He wrote about the extermination of Jews in Chelmno (Poland): “What I saw there filled me with horror. I saw how naked Jews and Jewish women were forced into a closed bus without windows. After the doors were closed, the engine was turned on. The exhaust gas was entering the closed bus... I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't have words to describe my feelings. It all seemed fantastic." In his diaries, Eichmann in every possible way downplays his role in carrying out the Holocaust and tries to imagine himself as “one of those horses that drags a cart and cannot turn anywhere, since the coachman does not allow it...” He wrote: “It was not in my power to stop this the car - just as it was not in my power to start it. There were too many of those who ordered the extermination of Jews... What could a man with the rank of chief lieutenant do? Nothing!" Legal adviser to the Israeli government, E. Rubinstein, said that the diaries were published because they could “help in the fight against those who are trying to deny what happened.”

Eichmann's diaries were actively used by the defense in the Royal Court in London during the trial, during which the claim of the English historian D. Irving against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt was examined. D. Irving, a famous historian who denies the Holocaust and the existence of gas chambers, was accused by D. Lipstadt of lying and distorting historical truths. On April 11, 2000, the Royal Court in London ruled that D. Lipstadt was completely correct in calling D. Irving a racist and anti-Semite and claiming that he “distorts, misquotes and falsifies.”

Eichmann Adolf (nationality- German) was born in 1906, March 19, in Solingen. During World War II he was a Gestapo officer and an SS lieutenant colonel. During his time at school, many believed that Adolf Eichmann is Jewish. After the war he hid in South America. However, Mossad agents tracked him down. He was kidnapped and taken to Israel.

Adolf Eichmann: photo, parents

My father was an accountant for the Electric Tramway Company. In 1913 he was transferred from Solingen to Linz on the Danube (in Austria). Until 1924, he served as commercial director. For many years, Eichmann's father was a public elder in the evangelical church community of Linz. He was married twice. Eichmann's mother died in 1916. In 1935, the future SS colonel married a peasant girl, Veronica Liebl. Married to her, he became the father of 4 sons.

Childhood

From an early age, Adolf Eichmann was a member of the Christian Youth Society. However, after a while he became dissatisfied with the management and left it. He joined the "Grif" group under the "Young Tourists" society, which was part of the Youth Union. He remained in it until he came of age. As you know, many children are teased during their school years. Was attacked by classmates and Adolf Eichmann. "Jew" - that’s what they called him at school. This was due to his appearance. He was short, had a “characteristic nose”, he had dark hair. Perhaps this became a prerequisite for the choice of activities that Adolf Eichmann later led.

However, he had no Jewish roots. He went to elementary school until the 4th grade. Hitler also studied there earlier. Subsequently, Adolf Eichmann was enrolled in a real school. Here he also received education until the 4th grade. After completing his studies, at the age of 15, Eichmann entered the Higher School of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering in Linz. Here he stayed for 4 semesters.

First job

Adolf was not a diligent student, and his father sent him to the mine he owned. Here the young man worked for about three months. After this, he was enrolled in the Upper Austrian Company, where he studied electrical engineering for 2.5 years. In 1928, a vacancy for a traveling representative opened up at the Vacuum Oil enterprise. I enrolled in it Adolf Eichmann. Family helped a 22-year-old boy get this job. He was brought into the military environment by a friend, Friedrich F. Schmidt. He had connections in the Youth Union of Front-line Soldiers, most of whose members were monarchist-minded.

Joining the SS

By the beginning of the 30s. In the 20th century, nationalist sentiments intensified in Austria. NSDAP meetings became frequent. The SS recruited people from the association of front-line soldiers, since its members were allowed to undergo shooting training. In 1932, April 1, Adolf Eichmann joined the SS on the recommendation of E. Kaltenbrunner. In 1933, the company where he worked transferred him to Salzburg. Eichmann returned to Linz every Friday, where he served. In 1933, in mid-June, the Austrian Chancellor banned the activities of the National Socialist Party. Soon Eichmann was fired from Vacuum Oil for his affiliation with the SS and left for Germany.

Start of service

Upon arrival in Germany, Eichmann came to Andreas Bolleck. He offered to become a member of the "Austrian Legion", located in Kloster-Lechfeld. Adolf Eichmann was enlisted in the assault squad. Here he trained mainly in street fighting. He soon became assistant to the chief of staff in Passau, SS Reisführer Major Karl F. Pihlya. From here Eichmann began writing reports and letters to Germany. By this time he had already received the rank of Unterscharführer. In 1934 the headquarters was abolished and Eichmann was transferred to a battalion in Dachau. Here he remained until 1934. During the same period, Adolf learned about the recruitment of people who had already served in the Security Council of Reichsführer Himmler. He writes a statement, which was soon granted. After being accepted into the Security Council, he is sent to do clerical work - to systematize the Masons' file cabinet.

Further activities in the SS

In 1935, Eichmann received an offer to move to the newly organized “Jews” department at the Main Directorate of the SD. He was instructed to prepare a certificate for T. Herzl’s book. Subsequently, the document he compiled acted as an official circular for official use in the SS. In 1936, Dieter Viscellini was appointed head of the department, where, in addition to Eichmann, Theodor Dannecker also worked. The Reich government sought to resolve the Jewish issue as quickly as possible. The department was entrusted with the task of ensuring the rapid forced emigration of people from Germany. Also in 1936, Eichmann received the rank of Oberscharführer, and a year later - Hauptscharführer. In 1938 he became Untersturmführer.

Organization of deportation

In 1938, Eichmann was transferred to the Vienna branch of the SD, where he was entrusted with solving the Jewish question. On his orders, community representative Dr. R. Levengerts developed a plan to organize the deportation of people. Soon Eichmann achieved the formation of an emigration institution in Vienna. After this, paperwork and leaving the country were put on stream. In April 1939, Eichmann was transferred to Prague. Here he continued organizing the deportation. At the beginning of October of the same year, he was included in the RSHA (Main Directorate for Imperial Security), and in December he was appointed to the post of head of sector IV B 4.

World War II

In 1941, Adolf Eichmann visited Auschwitz. After this, he authorized the sending of people to death camps. Eichmann, by order of Heydrich, participated in the activities of the Weisen Conference in 1942, where measures for the final resolution of the Jewish question - the extermination of millions of citizens - were discussed. He proposed immediately organizing the deportation of people to Eastern Europe. At the conference it was decided to entrust Eichmann with leadership of the operation. He was in a privileged position in the Gestapo. Often orders came to him directly from Himmler, bypassing Müller and Kaltenbrunner. In March 1944, Eichmann became leader of the Sonderkommando. She organized the sending of people to Auschwitz. In August of the same year, Eichmann presented a report to Himmler, in which he accounted for the extermination of 4 million Jews.

Post-war years

After the defeat of Germany, Adolf Eichmann was able to hide from the intelligence services. However, he was arrested by the Americans. After the war they became more active Nazi hunters. Adolf Eichmann could not hide his affiliation with the SS. But he introduced himself as a member of the volunteer cavalry. Eichmann understood that he could be exposed and escaped from prison. Using the "rat trail", he was able to obtain a passport under a new name.

In 1950, becoming Ricardo Clement, Eichmann moved to Argentina. Here he joins the local Mercedes-Benz division as an office worker. After 2 years, Adolf comes to Europe, marries his wife under his new name and takes the whole family to Argentina. He lived in Buenos Aires until 1960.

In 1958, the US CIA received information about Eichmann's whereabouts and his new name. However, the intelligence services classified the information, fearing that the fugitive might inform about the past of G. Globke, who at that time was the head of the secretariat of Chancellor Adenauer.

Adolf Eichmann: the story of the kidnapping

The operation was organized by the Mossad group. Eichmann's abduction and transfer to Israel from Argentina took place in 1960. It was an unofficial operation. Argentina subsequently charged Israel with violating its sovereignty. The illegality of the operation was justified by the unprecedented crimes of the fugitive. After all, for the genocide during World War II, he was directly responsible Adolf Eichmann. Trial his case ended with a death sentence. After 40 years, Argentina has formally apologized to all victims of the Holocaust for providing refuge to its perpetrators.

Prerequisites

It is worth saying that in Israel the issue of capturing and punishing the Nazis was very relevant. Most of the local population either suffered from the Holocaust themselves, or they had relatives, acquaintances, and friends who visited the death camps. About 200,000 Israelis went through ghettos and concentration camps. For this country, Adolf Eichmann was at the top of the list of wanted fascists. The capture of this man was a matter of principle.

Israeli intelligence version

Isser Harel’s book “The Kidnapping of the Executioner” indicates that in 1957, on September 19, the Prosecutor General of Hesse F. Bauer conveyed to Dr. Schneer information about the probable whereabouts of the fugitive in Argentina. This happened during the reparations negotiations. According to other sources, Bauer contacted Sh. Darom, an employee of the Israeli Security Service in Frankfurt. Information about Eichmann was obtained from Lothar Hermann. At one time he was a German lawyer, and subsequently settled in Argentina. During the war years, he, like many, suffered from the Nazis. Hermann suggested that Eichmann was one of the members of the German colony in Buenos Aires. He wrote to Bauer about his guesses. The information reached Isser Harel through the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Version by T. Friedman

According to other sources, an employee of the Yad Vashem Institute contacted Eichmann. Tuvya Friedman was a former prisoner. In 1957 he created the independent Institute for the Investigation and Documentation of Nazi Crimes. It was he who achieved the allocation of a prize of 10 thousand dollars for information about the whereabouts of the fugitive.

The first attempt was made by Friedman at the end of the war. Then he acted together with Asher Ben-Nathan, who represented Mossad Le-Aliyah Bet (a secret organization of Jews) in Austria. They managed to interrogate Dieter Viscellini. Through him they received information about Eichmann's driver and mistress. However, the ambush at the latter’s apartment did not bring any results. But she managed to extract some information regarding the place where Adolf Eichmann. Photo the fugitive was also obtained from her.

In 1959, at the end of August, Friedman received a letter from the head of the Federal Center, which was investigating Nazi crimes, E. Schule. The message said that Eichmann was in Kuwait. Friedman knew Maariv newspaper journalist Mosha Meisels, to whom he offered to publish the information. They decided to do this on the eve of Judgment Day - October 11, 1959, in order to remind the government of its duty to all those who died in the camps. The article was republished by many publications, and a large number of media outlets referred to it in their reports.

On October 12, information appeared in a German-language newspaper published in Buenos Aires. A week later, Hermann sent a letter to Friedman, indicating that Eichmann was in Argentina, and not in Kuwait. In the message, the author wrote that the fugitive lives very carefully, under a different name, with his wife and sons in his own house. According to Hermann, Eichmann was rich and, skillfully maneuvering, hid from public attention.

According to Israeli historian Sh. Briman, there were three more letters to Friedman. After that, he brought Herman together with Mossad representatives. It is worth saying that most of the sources do not mention Friedman. Although he is present on the official list of persons who participated in the capture of Eichmann.

Lothar Hermann

This man, according to historians, played a key role in the capture of Eichmann. Herman could not avoid being sent to the camp, despite the absence of special prerequisites for this. He was a German Jew, his wife was German. Herman was blind, however, despite this, living in Argentina, he was interested in all the events that related to the capture of fugitive fascists.

When he learned that his daughter had met a certain Nicholas Eichmann, who spoke about his father’s services to the Reich, Herman compared the information with what he already knew and realized that this was the son of the wanted executioner. The promised prize was given to him only in 1972, shortly before his death.

For a long time his name was hidden. When the public found out who had revealed Eichmann's whereabouts, Hermann began to be pursued by local Nazis. Lothar's daughter was forced to leave Argentina.

Preparing the operation

Having found out where Eichmann is hiding, the Israeli leadership decides to secretly smuggle him out of Argentina. There was a risk that the official request for the extradition of the fugitive would be rejected, and he would escape again. The fact is that after the end of the war, Argentina was a refuge for the Nazis. Juan Peron, the country's president, sympathized with Hitler. He not only allowed huge numbers of Germans to enter, but also actively contributed to their concealment. Many Nazis took up service in the Argentine armed forces. By 1955, the president was overthrown. However, pro-Nazi sentiments were very strong. The chances of extraditing the fugitive were negligible. The Israeli government could not take such a risk. In addition, there was a possibility that Eichmann would be extradited to Germany. But 15 years after the end of the war, fugitive fascists received rather lenient punishments. Israel feared that Eichmann would escape responsibility.

Organizing the kidnapping

The operation was personally led by the head of the Mossad, Harel. Rafi Eitan was appointed head of the task force. Everyone who took part in the abduction was volunteers. Most of them suffered from the Nazis, many had loved ones killed. All volunteers were warned that Eichmann must be brought in alive.

At the end of 1959, the development of the abduction began. In April of the following year, the participants began their actual preparations. The operatives arrived in Argentina one at a time at different times. To arrange trips, the Mossad leadership organized a travel agency. The operation was timed to coincide with the visit of the Israeli delegation to Buenos Aires to celebrate the anniversary of the country's independence.

There was no regular air service between the states. In this regard, it was decided to take Eichmann out by plane of the official delegation. I had to let the airline administration know the plans of the operatives.

On April 26, surveillance of Eichmann was established. Three days later, Harel flew to Argentina. A total of 30 people took part in the operation, 12 of whom were involved in the direct capture and removal, and the rest performed auxiliary functions. In Buenos Aires, operatives rented several cars and houses, organized communications, and worked out all the details, including backup options in case of failure.

The first capture date was set for May 10. But, taking into account the comments of the task force, it was postponed for a day.

Course of events

On May 11, seven people in two cars were waiting for Eichmann, who was supposed to return from work. As a rule, he arrived on the seven o'clock evening bus. But this time he was not there. He appeared only at 20.05. Turning on the flashlight, Eichmann headed towards the house. His immediate arrest was carried out by Peter Malkin.

When the fugitive approached the ambush at a distance of about 10 meters, he called out to him in Spanish. Approaching him, Malkin squeezed Eichmann’s neck and threw him to the ground. Helpers jumped out of the car. Avraham Shalom grabbed the fugitive by the legs, Eitan helped from the other side. The three of them pushed Eichmann into the car.

As Malkin later said, it took them no more than 20 seconds to capture. There were no witnesses nearby. According to Eitan, Eichmann offered no resistance, he simply howled. In the car, they put a gag in his mouth, tied him up, put on glasses, and covered him with a blanket.

After delivery, Eichmann was searched and examined for signs. Zvi Aroni conducted the first interrogation, during which the identity of the fugitive was confirmed. Eichmann named all his numbers without hesitation, including his NSDAP party card.

On May 13, operatives notified the government of the seizure. Eichmann was kept at the villa for 9 days under heavy guard. He was handcuffed to the bed. All this time he was wearing dark glasses. There was a guard in the same room with him, who was ordered to keep an eye on the prisoner. The second person was in the adjacent room with the door open. Everyone in the villa was forbidden to speak with Eichmann. Eitan monitored the implementation of the order.

At night a guard was posted in the yard. An alarm button was installed directly in the room where the prisoner was located. Entry and exit from the house was restricted. Harel visited Eichmann on 15 May. All people who had contact with the prisoner to one degree or another were forced to control their emotions and restrain themselves and others.

As Harel later wrote, the woman who was preparing the food could hardly resist poisoning Eichmann. During his detention in the villa, interrogations were carried out. Harel claims that the operatives managed to obtain a written voluntary confession of the captive to the crimes, as well as consent to trial in Israel.

Export

On May 19, an El Al plane landed at Buenos Aires airport. The next evening, Eichmann was drugged and dressed in a pilot's uniform. At the airport a passport was presented in the name of Rafael Arnon. Previously, a fictitious accident was initiated with his participation, a document was issued about his discharge from the hospital, where it was indicated that the patient could fly on an airplane under the supervision of a doctor. At midnight the plane took off for Israel.

Sentence

A meeting took place on May 22. Numerous witnesses who survived the Holocaust spoke at the hearing. Since 1954, the death penalty has been prohibited. However, capital punishment, according to the Knesset, was a fair punishment for everything he had done Adolf Eichmann. Execution took place in 1962, from May 31 to June 1. In prison, the prisoner kept diaries. They were subsequently published.

Additionally

Journalists were present at the hearing. Quotes by Adolf Eichmann The meetings were recorded not only in the minutes. Most of those present treated the accused with hatred. However, there were those who felt pity for him.

Some have survived quotes by Adolf Eichmann. For example, he said that he never worked for money. His only goal was to serve the country.

There is evidence of how Eichmann Adolf died. His last words were addressed to his country, Argentina and Austria. Before being hanged, he said that he was obliged to comply with military rules and served the flag of Germany. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the sea.

It is worth saying that the case of Adolf Eichmann caused quite a wide international resonance. Some countries criticized the Israeli government. Other states, including the USSR, supported the operation.

More than one film was released based on these events. Adolf Eichmann, according to Hannah Arendt, a correspondent for The New Yorker magazine, was not some kind of monster. She wrote that he was a completely ordinary ordinary person, one of the cogs of the totalitarian mechanism. If you watch the film made in 1975, Adolf Eichmann is truly shown as an ordinary citizen doing his duty. At the same time, in the film, in addition to controversial issues of personal and collective responsibility for war crimes, the problem of implementing the “eye for an eye” principle is considered.

At the trial, Eichmann expressed neither grief nor repentance. He said that he did not understand why they hated him, because he was only following orders.