Adolf Eichmann

At 56 years old, Adolf Eichmann has this physical status:

Otto Adolf Eichmann (19 March 1906 – 1 June 1962) was a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the Holocaust's key organizers. In Nazi terms, he was referred to as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in Nazi terms.

During World War II, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich had been given the task of assisting and coordinating the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.

In a widely publicised trial in Jerusalem, where he was executed by hanging in 1962, Eichmann was kidnapped by the Mossad in Argentina on May 11th, and later found guilty of war crimes. Eichmann worked briefly for his father's mining company in Austria, where the family had migrated in 1914.

He served as a traveling oil salesman beginning in 1927 and then joined both the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932.

He returned to Germany in 1933, where he joined the Sicherheitsdienst ("SD, "Security Service"); thereafter, he was appointed head of the branch in charge of Jewish affairs, particularly emigration, which the Nazis embraced by violence and economic hardship.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Eichmann and his staff arranged for Jews to be concentrated in ghettos in major cities in the hopes of being transported either east or overseas.

Early life and education

Otto Adolf Eichmann, the eldest of five children in Solingen, Germany, was born in 1906 to a Calvinist Protestant family. Adolf Karl Eichmann, a bookkeeper, and Maria (née Schefferling), a housewife, were among his parents. Adolf's elder brother moved to Linz, Austria, in 1913 to work as the Linz Tramway and Electric Company's commercial manager, and the rest of the family followed a year later. Maria Zawrzel, a devout Protestant with two sons, was married by Eichmann's father after Maria's death in 1916.

Eichmann attended the Kaiser Franz Joseph Staatsschule (state secondary school) in Linz, the same high school Adolf Hitler attended 17 years ago. He played the violin and played in sports and clubs, including a Wandervogel woodcraft and scouting group of several right-wing militias. His father was expelled from the Realschule and enrolled him in the Höher Bundeslehranstalt for Elektrotechnik, Maschinenbau, and Hochbau vocational college due to his poor school results. He left college without obtaining a diploma and joined his father's new company, the Untersberg Mining Company, where he spent many months. He worked as a sales clerk for the Oberösterreichische Elektrobau AG radio company from 1925 to 1927. Eichmann served as the district agent for the Valiant Oil Company AG in Upper Austria and Salzburg between 1927 and 1933.

He joined the Jungfrontkämpfervereinigung, the youth group of Hermann Hiltl's right-wing veterans', at this point, and started reading Nazi newspapers published by the Nazi Party. The dissolution of the Weimar Republic in Germany, the rejection of the terms of the Versailles Treaty, radical antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism were among the party's agendas. They promised a strong central government, increased Lebensraum (living space) for Germanic peoples, the establishment of a national community based on ethnicity, and racial cleansing by active persecution of Jews, who will be barred of their citizenship and civil rights.

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Early career

Eichmann joined the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party on April 1, 1932, member number 889,895. His membership in the SS was confirmed seven months later (SS member number 45,326). His regiment was SS-Standarte 37, who was charged with guarding the party's headquarters in Linz and protecting party speakers at rallies, which would often be hostile. Eichmann enjoyed partying in Linz on weekends while working at Valiant Oil in Salzburg.

Eichmann lost his career as a result of staffing layoffs at Valiant Oil just a few months after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in January 1933. Around the same time, the Nazi Party was banned in Austria. These events were involved in Eichmann's decision to return to Germany.

Eichmann left Passau, where he met Andreas Bolek at his headquarters in the spring of 1933, like many other Nazis fleeing Austria. After completing a training program at the SS depot in Klosterlechfeld in August, Eichmann returned to Passau, where he was sent to lead an eight-man SS liaison team to guide Austrian National Social Socialists into Germany and smuggle propaganda from there into Austria. Eichmann was promoted to SS-Scharführer (squad leader, similar to corporal) in late December, when this unit was dissolved. The Deutschland Regiment's battalion was quartered at barracks next door to Dachau's concentration camp.

To escape the "monotony" of military preparation and service at Dachau by 1934, Eichmann requested transfer to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) of the SS. Eichmann was accepted into the SD and posted to the Freemasons sub-office, assisting in the acquisition of a forensic database of German Freemasons and Masonic organisations. He curated an anti-Masonic exhibition that was extremely popular. Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, and Baron Leopold von Mildenstein were among the visitors. Eichmann was invited by Mildenstein to join his Jewish Department, Section II/112 of the SD's Berlin headquarters. In November 1934, Eichmann's transfer was approved. He later considered it to be his big break. He was expected to research and prepare reports on the Zionist movement and various Jewish organisations. He also learned a smattering of Hebrew and Yiddish, and began to establish himself as a Zionist and Jewish specialist. Veronika (Vera) Liebl, 1935-1990-1993), married Eichmann on March 21. Klaus (born 1936 in Berlin), Horst Adolf (born 1940 in Vienna), Dieter Helmut (born 1942 in Prague) and Rigoberto Francisco (born 1955 in Buenos Aires) were two brothers. In 1936, Eichmann was promoted to SS-Hauptscharführer (head squad commander) and was posted as an SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) the following year. In 1937, Eichmann left the cathedral.

Around 250,000 of the country's 437,000 Jews immigrated between 1933 and 1939, with violence and economic pressure causing Jews to leave Germany of their own volition; Eichmann and his colleague Herbert Hagen travelled to Palestine in 1937 to investigate the possibility of Germany's Jews voluntarily returning to the country, disembarking with forged press credentials at Haifa, Egypt's Jewish refugees. Feival Polkes, an Haganah agent, was unable to strike a deal when they first arrived. More Jews should be able to leave under the Haavara Convention, according to Polkes, who recommends that refugees enter Palestine under a less restricted form of immigration. Hagen's argument was dismissed for two reasons: a strong Jewish presence in Palestine could lead to the establishment of a separate state, which would be in violation of Reich policy to encourage free transfer of "Jewish capital." A few days later, Eichmann and Hagen attempted to return to Palestine, but they were refused admission after the British authorities refused to give them the required visas. In 1982, they published their paper on their visit.

Eichmann was sent to Vienna in 1938 to assist with Jewish emigration from Austria, which had just been integrated into the Reich after the Anschluss. The SD and Jewish community groups were placed under surveillance, and they were charged with encouraging and facilitating Jewish migration. The funds were obtained from donations from abroad, as well as others under SD surveillance. In July 1938, Eichmann was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer (first lieutenant) and subsequently transferred to the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, where he was appointed in August in a room in the former Palais Albert Rothschild's Prinz-Straße 20–22. Nearly 100,000 Jews had left Austria law by the time he left Vienna in May 1939, and many more had been smuggled out to Palestine and elsewhere.

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