On June 1, 1966, the head of Gestapo Section IV, Adolf Eichmann, was executed at Ramleh prison in Israel for crimes committed during World War II (HT: Security Watchtower).
One of the architects of the Holocaust, Eichmann helped organize the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, where Germany's anti-Jewish measures were set down into an official policy of genocide. To this "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" Eichmann was tasked as "Transportation Administrator", which put him in charge of all the trains which would carry Jews to the Death Camps in the territory of occupied Poland. For the next two years, Eichmann performed his duties with incredible zeal, often bragging that he had personally sent over five million Jews to their deaths by way of his trains.
At the end of the war he was interned in an American camp, but his identity was unknown and the war criminal escaped. In 1950, with help from the SS underground, Eichmann was shuttled off to Argentina, where he lived for the next ten years.
In 1960, the Israeli Mossad discovered that Eichmann was in Argentina and began an effort to locate his exact whereabouts. The Israeli government then approved an operation to capture Eichmann and bring him to Jerusalem for trial as a war criminal. He was captured by a team of Mossad agents on May 11, 1960, as part of a covert operation. He was flown aboard an El Al Bristol Britannia from Argentina to Israel on May 21, 1960. Two days after his arrival in Israel, then PM David Ben Gurion announced the capture to the Knesset, which receiving a standing ovation.
On August 14, 1961, after 14 weeks of testimony with more than 1,500 documents, 100 prosecution witnesses (90 of whom were Nazi concentration camp survivors) and dozens of defense depositions delivered by diplomatic couriers from 16 different countries, the judges were then left to deliberate. On December 11 the three presiding judges announced their verdict where Eichmann was convicted on all counts. He was then sentenced to death on December 15, 1961. Eichmann was hanged a few minutes after midnight on June 1, 1962, officially the only civil execution ever carried out in Israel. Eichmann allegedly refused a last meal, preferring instead a bottle of red Israeli wine. He also refused to don the traditional black hood for his execution. His body was cremated and ashes scattered at sea the very next morning, so that no nation would serve as a final resting place.
You missed the execution date by five years.
Posted by: Gansauer | Nov 25, 2006 at 20:22