Adolf Eichmann

Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian who drifted through early failure - poor school marks, brief stints in his father's mining company, then years as a travelling oil salesman - before joining the Nazi Party and SS in 1932. By 1933 he had found his place in the Sicherheitsdienst, heading the department for Jewish affairs and enforcing emigration through violence and economic pressure. He attended the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, took the minutes, and afterward managed the deportations to extermination camps across occupied Europe. In March 1944 he oversaw the removal of Hungary's Jews; by July, 437,000 of 725,000 had been deported, most gassed on arrival at Auschwitz. A colleague later testified that Eichmann said he would "leap laughing into the grave" knowing five million deaths were on his conscience. Captured by US forces in 1945, he escaped, hid in Lower Saxony, then fled to Argentina in 1950 with papers arranged by a Catholic bishop. Mossad found him in 1960, abducted him, and brought him to Jerusalem, where he stood trial on fifteen charges, admitted his role but claimed he was following orders, and was hanged on 1 June 1962.