ON THIS DAY

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April 11, 1961:

Eichmann trial begins.

Otto Adolf Eichmann (1906 – 1962) was a German-Austrian official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Following this, he was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and Nazi extermination camps across German-occupied Europe.

He was captured and detained by the Allies in 1945, but escaped and eventually settled in Argentina. In May 1960, he was tracked down and apprehended by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, and put on trial before the Supreme Court of Israel. The trial began this day in 1961.

The highly publicised Eichmann trial resulted in his conviction in Jerusalem, following which he was executed by hanging in 1962, the only death sentence ever imposed by an Israeli court.

Eichmann 1942

On trial, 1961

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