Kidnapped in Argentina, executed in Israel: how Adolf Eichmann’s trial unfolded

Otto Adolf Eichmann He was 55 when he sat on the dock, inside an armored glass booth and in front of hundreds of spectators, judges and prosecutors, this Tuesday, April 11, 1961, in Jerusalem, Israel.

The world was ready to hear from more than a hundred survivors, called as witnesses, the horrors endured during the policy of extermination implemented by the Nazi regime in Adolf Hitler and his cabinet of hierarchs, who, while Second World War (1939-1945) against the allies, at the same time accelerated the project to annihilate the Jewish people of Europe.

Eichmann had been one of those responsible for this extermination, which consisted in expelling German territory from millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled and kill them in huge death factories located in other European countries occupied by the Nazis, like Poland.

Known as the “Final Solution”, the massacre became official on January 20, 1942 in Wannsee, Berlin, but it had already been going on for at least two years; In reality Auschwitz, the most emblematic concentration camp, began operating in 1940.

In Wannsee, 15 Nazi hierarchs, including Eichmann himself, with the rank of Obersturmbannführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), came together to “solve” what they saw as “the Jewish problem” and give it a definite boost.

During the Jerusalem trial, as witnesses recounted the horror, those present passed out. The Attorney General of Israel, Gideon Hausner, accused Eichmann of 15 counts, among which crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity.

The process was broadcast live and direct on national radio Kol Israel, it was translated into four languages ​​simultaneously, and hundreds of journalists came from all over the world to report on the largest trial in history against a Nazi criminal. and also the first, and the last, carried out in Israel.

After the fall of the Nazi regime and the end of the war in May 1945, Eichmann fled Europe with a false identity, thanks to the help of the Red Cross and the Church. SS Obersturmbannführer was among the most sought after hierarchies, but he wasn’t going to surrender, at least not during those years.

He left the port of Genoa, Italy, on June 17, 1950, and arrived in Buenos Aires almost a month later, on July 14. He had a new name: Ricardo klement.

With this identity he lived in Tucumán and Buenos Aires, worked in the factory Orbis by Villa Adelina and in Mercedes Benz, as a mechanic and plant manager; He moved to the Vicente López neighborhood, saw various comrades in Olivos and even met Josef menguele, another Nazi war criminal who also lived in Buenos Aires enjoying total impunity.

In 1958, he moved with his wife and four children to the town of San Fernando, in the legendary street Garibaldi 6067, near Route 202, in a small brick house in a disadvantaged neighborhood, without electricity or running water, where he had a shed where he kept rabbits.

Under the alias of Klement, Eichman thus lived peacefully in Argentina and did so for a long decade, until he was detected, following a series of denunciations made by a Jewish survivor of the ‘Holocaust, Lothar Hermann, whose daughter was dating one of Eichmann’s sons, in a new plot.

After much planning, the Israeli Mossad secret service finally caught him on May 11, 1960, on his way home from work, after getting off bus 203 as if he was just another citizen.

Kidnapped, Eichmann was smuggled into Israel, without the Argentinian government knowing it, in a secret mission known as “Operation Garibaldi” which provoked diplomatic conflicts.

Those present said the Nazi hierarch remained calm during the hearings, which lasted nearly five months, and that never expressed feelings of any kind.

His lawyer, Robert servatius, did not deny the accusations against Eichmann, but presented him as a mere cog in a death machine, a bureaucrat who only carried out orders in the service of a totalitarian regime in which dissent does not was not considered.

“I did not persecute the Jews with greed or pleasure,” Eichmann asserted. “The government did it. The persecution, on the other hand, could only be decided by a government, but by no means by me. I accuse the leaders of having abused my obedience. At that time, obedience was required, as it was later that of the subordinates, ”he argued at that time.

Eichmann wrote a journal in prison during the time the process was going on and where he justified his actions without showing any regret.

His defense did not mitigate the sentence or evade the sentence. The tribunal chaired by Moshe Landau, Benjamin Halevy Yes Yitzhak Raveh he condemned him as responsible for the “factory execution” of millions of people wiped out in the forced labor and extermination camps set up by the Nazis in the occupied territories.

The jury found it guilty of genocide and on December 15, 1961, it was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. Servatius appealed against the sentence. Eichmann wrote a letter asking for clemency, but the resolution remained firm, until, on May 31, 1962, he was executed.

His last wish was to drink wine. When he stood on the scaffolding, he refused to attach a hood and requested that the ropes that bound his legs be loosened.

Before the executioners pulled the gallows, he said his last words: “In a little while, we will meet again, for it is the fate of all men.” Long live Germany. Long live Austria. Long live Argentina. These are the countries I identify with the most and I will never forget them ”.

His body was cremated and his ashes thrown into the Mediterranean Sea. His memoirs, some 1,200 pages handwritten in prison, were published forty years later. It is presumed that their children and grandchildren live in Argentina under a different identity.