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At the start of the Second World War, Eichmann had been promoted to SS- Hauptsturmführer and had made a name for himself with his Office for Jewish Emigration. Eichmann had even been sponsored, by the SS Race and Settlement Office, to take a trip to Palestine and study aspects of the Jewish Homeland. Ironically, through this work, Eichmann made several contacts in the Zionist movement which he worked with to speed up Jewish Emigration from the Reich.
Eichmann's office was expanded in late 1939 to cover the entirety of the German Reich and Eichmann was transferred from the SD to the Gestapo in 1940. He was promoted to the rank of SS- Sturmbannführer in late 1940 and, less than a year later, Eichmann had been promoted to Obersturmbannführer. He was assigned as the commander of the Jewish Division of the Gestapo Religions Department in the Reich Central Security Office ( RSHA) with the code for Eichmann's position listed as "IV-B4".
In 1942, Eichmann was personally invited by Reinhard Heydrich to attend the Wannsee Conference 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 Eichmann in charge of all the trains which would carry Jews to the Death Camps of Poland. For the next two years, Eichmann performed his duties with incredible zeal, often times bragging that he had personally sent over five million Jews to their deaths by way of his trains.
Eichmann's work had been noticed and, in 1944, he was sent to Hungary after Germany had occupied that country in fear of a Soviet invasion. Eichmann at once went to work deporting Jews and was able to send four hundred thousand Hungarians to their deaths in the Nazi gas chambers.
By 1945, Eichmann's world was collapsing as the SS Reich Leader, Heinrich Himmler, had ordered that Jewish extermination be halted and evidence of the Final Solution be destroyed. Eichmann blatantly turned against Himmler and continued his work in Hungary against official orders. Eichmann was also working to avoid being called up in the last ditch German military effort, since a year before he had been commissioned as a Reserve Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS and was now being ordered to active combat duty.
Eichmann fled Hungary in 1945 as the Russians invaded and he returned to Austria where he met up with his old friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Kaltenbrunner, however, refused to associate with Eichmann since Eichmann's duties as an extermination administrator had left him a marked man by the Allies.
At the end of World War II, Eichmann fled into hiding, being briefly captured by the Americans although managing to escape by using a false name and claiming to be a demobilized German Army soldier. Eichmann was able to secure passage to South America and he left Germany at the start of 1947.
Eichmann settled in Buenos Aires, under the assumed name Ricardo Clement and, for the next fifteen years, worked in several odd jobs from factory foreman, to junior water engineer, and professional rabbit farmer. Eichmann had also brought his family to Argentina and had started a completely new life.
In 1960, the Israeli Secret Service learned that Eichmann was in Argentina and began an effort to locate his exact whereabouts. This was done in 1961, when it was confirmed that Ricardo Clement was, in fact, Adolf Eichmann and the Israeli government sponsored an effort to kidnap Eichmann and bring him to Jerusalem for trial as a war criminal. He was kidnapped by a team of Israeli agents led by Peter Malkin of the Mossad (Israeli secret service) on May 11, 1960 as part of a covert operation. He was flown aboard an El Al jet from Argentina to Israel on May 21, 1960.
His trial in front of an Israeli court in Jerusalem started on February 11, 1961. He was indicted on 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization.
The trial caused huge international controversy as well as an international sensation. The Israeli government deliberately fueled the sensation by allowing news programs all over the world to broadcast the trial live without any restrictions. Television viewers saw a nondescript man sitting in a bulletproof glass booth while witnesses, including many Holocaust survivors, testified against him and his role in transporting victims to the extermination camps. During the whole trial, Eichmann insisted that he was only "following orders."
Convicted on all counts, Eichmann was sentenced to death (the only civil execution ever carried out in Israel) on December 2, 1961 and was hanged a few minutes after midnight on June 1, 1962 at Ramla prison. His body was cremated and ashes scattered at sea, so that no nation would serve as Adolf Eichmann's final resting place.
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