Summary
Adolf Eichmann, in Lahav’s account: head of Department IV B 4 of the Reich Security Services, in charge of Jewish Affairs and Evacuation, who engineered the systematic transportation and murder of the larger part of European Jewry; captured by the Mossad in Argentina, tried in Jerusalem in 1961–62 (see Eichmann Trial) and executed after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1733-1936).
Details
- Eichmann proved his managerial skills expelling Vienna’s Jews, and in 1944 reactivated the Auschwitz crematoria to add Hungarian Jewry to what Lahav calls “his 5.5 million victims”; after the war he escaped to Argentina under a false identity (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1733-1790).
- In Budapest in 1944 he negotiated with Rudolf Kasztner and Joel Brand — taking ransom money, offering to spare lives, proposing “trucks for blood”, promising Brand on 15 May 1944 to keep the deported Jews “on ice” (to postpone their execution) — and threatened Kasztner: “You seem extremely tense, Kasztner. I am sending you to Teresienstadt for recovery; or would you prefer Auschwitz?” (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1618-1695).
- His appeal defenses — ex post facto law, territoriality, a German extradition claim, acts of state and the “small cog” of superior orders — were all rejected; the Court held he performed the extermination order con amore, “with genuine zeal and devotion to that objective” (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1800-1936).
- His plea for a pardon was denied; he was hanged on the night of 31 May–1 June 1962, cremated, and his remains scattered over the Mediterranean (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1912-1945).
Related pages
Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, Eichmann Trial, Rudolf Kasztner, Kasztner Trial