Adolf Eichmann was born into a middle class Protestant family in Linz, Austria. This is the same town where Adolf Hitler spent his youth, but the two Adolfs did not know each another. It is strange then, that Eichmann would end up the architect of the Nazi’s plan to exterminate the European Jews during World War Two.

Eichmann was a traveling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company when he joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1933. He did so well that by 1934, Himmler’s Secret Service chose him to handle the “Jewish question.” Eichmann tried to get the European Jews to move to Palestine, but when he went to the then British occupied Palestine to work out the details, the British sent him home.

During the late 1930’s, Eichmann handled the Jews in the European states conquered by Hitler. He stripped them of everything and concentrated them in ghettos. Most of these ghettos were located near railroad junctions; this would allow the Nazi’s to ship them to concentration camps in the near future.

By 1939, Eichmann was in charge of the Nazi’s Jewish Program in Berlin. He became responsible for carrying out, “The Final Solution.” This involved the total extermination of Jews. In this task, Eichmann had no equal. Even though he claimed he did not dislike Jews, he ordered their killing without mercy. Eichmann remained committed up to the very end of the war. In fact, in 1944, his superior officer, Hammer, ordered Eichmann to stop gassing the Jews. Eichmann refused and disobeyed the order.

When the Allies took over Germany near the end of the war, the Americans captured Eichmann and put him in jail. However, because he was relatively unknown, he managed to slip away and escape to Argentina, where he lived under an assumed name until 1960. The Israeli Intelligence, Mossad, learned of his new life and began an extremely delicate operation to capture him and return him to Israel to stand trial. They abducted him from the street in front of his house as he was arriving home to present flowers to his wife for their 25th wedding anniversary. Shoved into a car and whisked away to a safe house for a week, Eichmann proved to be an ideal captive. He readily confessed his identity and blamed all he had done on the Nazi “regime.” They secretly flew him to Israel, and after a five-month trial, he was condemned to death. The Israelis finally got their justice and hanged him in Ramleh prison on May 31, 1962.