On This Day in History: May 11
Adolph Eichmann is captured
This motherfucker. I’m not a big fan of the death penalty, but Adolf Eichmann was a piece of shit who absolutely deserved to fucking die.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: May 11, 1960--
For a couple hundred years in Europe there was this horrifyingly antisemitic thing called “The Jewish Question.” It was a debate regarding what should be done regarding the status and treatment of Jews. The idea of considering them human beings with equal rights wasn’t given much thought.
In Nazi Germany, the belief that Jews posed a problem for the state prompted the development of a “Final Solution” to this question. Adolf Eichmann was the primary organizer of said solution: The Holocaust.
After World War II, Eichmann was captured by U.S. forces, but false documents and Nazi-sympathizing Catholic clergy enabled him to escape detection. He relocated to Argentina in 1950, eventually getting a job with Mercedes-Benz.
There were plenty of other Nazis for Eichmann to hang with in Argentina, so he didn’t lay that low. American intelligence got tips about Eichmann but didn’t consider Nazi-hunting one of their jobs. They also feared Nazi testimonies would bring embarrassing things about certain West German allies into the light. Holocaust survivors, however, were determined to track these fuckers down and bring them to justice for their crimes against humanity.
A seven-year intelligence operation by Nazi hunters and Israeli intelligence culminated in the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, sending an eight-man team to capture Eichmann and put him on trial.
On the night of May 11, 1960, the team stopped Eichmann after he got off the bus he’d taken from work and was walking the final steps to his home. They wrestled him to the ground and shoved him into a waiting car, driving him to a Mossad safe house. They held him there for nine days while his identity was confirmed, then drugged him and flew him back to Israel in secret. When the Argentinians found out, they were pissed.
The televised trial lasted 56 days and saw 112 witnesses, many of them survivors of the Holocaust, testify. It received prominent media coverage and served to substantially raise international awareness of the Nazi acts of genocide.
Despite using the “just following orders” excuse, Eichmann was found guilty and executed by hanging on June 1, 1962. He was immediately cremated, and his ashes scattered in the Mediterranean outside of Israeli territorial waters by the Israeli Navy.
Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.
Much as I detest the current government of Israel, there's a reason Israelis hang on to that piece of land so hard -- even after the Holocaust, the US held to hard quotas for how many Jewish refugees would be allowed to settle here, and where would they have felt safe in Europe ever again?
In high school in the late 70's I made the mistake of asking an Israeli exchange student why she was so gung-ho about her upcoming mandatory military service. "BECAUSE I'M SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE WHO WANT ME AND ALL JEWS DEAD!!" I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist, and definitely the vehemence, of her response. She wasn't wrong.
Nazi-sympathizing Catholic clergy?? WTF?? Oh right, why am I shocked? Catlicks good, Juze bad.