biography
| name: |
Eichmann, (Karl) Adolf
|
pronunciation:
[iykhman]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1906–62)
|
| biography:
| Nazi war criminal, born in Solingen, W Germany. He was raised in Austria and joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1932, becoming a member of the SS. He became the SS's ‘Jewish expert’, acquiring an exhaustive amount of knowledge on Jewish culture, and was put in charge of administering the ‘final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish problem’ - the intended systematic deportation and extermination of Europe's 11 million Jews. With sustained efficiency, he was instrumental in organizing the round-up of around 6 million Jews from the occupied areas of Europe and their subsequent transportation to labour or death camps, and masterminding the feasibility of their extermination there. Captured by US forces in 1945, he escaped from prison some months later, having kept his identity hidden, and in 1950 reached Argentina. After efforts by Wiesenthal to bring him to justice, he was traced and kidnapped by Israeli agents, taken to Israel in 1960, tried, convicted of crimes against humanity, and executed. The Eichmann trial was seen on television by millions, and became an important milestone in revealing the details of the Holocaust. |
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