Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Eichmann , 1906-62, German National Socialist official. A member of the Austrian Nazi party, he headed the Austrian office for Jewish emigration (1938). His zeal in deporting Jews brought him promotion (1939) to chief of the Gestapo's Jewish section. Eichmann promoted the use of gas chambers for the mass extermination of Jews in concentration camps, and he oversaw the maltreatment, deportation, and murder of millions of Jews in World War II. Arrested by the Allies in 1945, he escaped and settled in Argentina. He was located by Israeli agents in 1960 and abducted to Israel, where he was tried (1961) and hanged for crimes against the Jewish people and against humanity.

Bibliography: See biography by D. Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann (2006); H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963, rev. ed. 2006); J. Donovan, Eichmann: Mastermind of the Holocaust (1978); P. Rassinier, The Real Eichmann Trial (1980).

Eichmann, Adolf (1906–62),SS Obersturmbannführer (lt-colonel) who from the autumn of 1941 headed the RSHA's Section IV B4, the Race and Resettlement Office, which administered the mass extermination of European Jewry (see Final Solution). He attended the Wannsee conference in January 1942 and in March 1944 he conducted negotiations with the Jewish Agency, through an intermediary, to exchange Hungarian Jews, whom he was deporting to Auschwitz, for merchandise or cash (see Brand). At the end of the war he escaped recognition and eventually emigrated to Argentina. In 1960 he was kidnapped by Israeli agents, put on trial in Israel, and hanged.

Bibliography

Pearlman, M. , The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann (London, 1963).