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| Adolf Eichmann was born
on March 19,1906 near Cologne, Germany. He was born a protestant. His family
was of the traveling type, they moved to Austria after his mother died.
Soon after they moved Litz Austria the birth place of Adolf Hitler. As
a boy Adolf was teased about his religion, looks, family, and was also
called many times a ''Jew.'' In his teenage life after failing to complete
his engineering studies,he worked on his fathers small mining company.
Some other odd jobs he did were working for an american oil company and
as a store clerk. In 1932 at the age of 26 he joined the growing Nazi party
at the suggestion of one of his friends Ernst Kaltenbrunner.
Soon after he became a member of the SS and in 1934 served as an SS corporal at Dachau concentration camp. In September 1934 Eichmann found relief from the monitory of the assignment by getting in Heydrich SD, the powerful security service. Later on he started as a filing clerk cataloging information about Freemasons. He was then assigned to the jewish sector who was collecting information on the Jews. This began his interest in the Jewish cultures and religion. He studied all aspects of the culture, attended their meetings, and often visited Jewish sections of the city while taking notes. He became familiar with the issue of Zionism, studied Hebrew, and even spoke a little Yiddish. He was kidded and even called |
| and sometimes called a ''Jewish specialist'' realizing he could soon have positive implications in the SS. Not long after he started to attract the attention of Heydrich and SS Reichfurher. In 1934 Henrich Himmler appointed him head of the newly created SD scientific Museum of Jewish Affairs. He was also assigned to investigate " solutions to the Jewish question". In 1937 he visited Palestine to discuss the possibility of large scale immigration of Jews to the Middle East with Arab leaders. with Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938 he was sent to Vienna where he established a central office for Jewish Emigrants. This office held the sole authority to issue permits to Jewish people who desperately wanted to leave Austria and become engaged in exerting wealth in return for a safe passage. Nearly a 100,000 Jews (Austrian Jews) managed to leave with mostly all turning over all their worldly possessions to Eichmanns office. This concept was so popular that 2 more offices were established in Prague and in Berlin. In 1939 he went to Berlin where he was appointed head of the Gestapo Section IVb B4 of the new Reich Man Security office called RSHA. He was soon after was responsible for implementation of Nazi policies toward Jews in Germany and all other 16 territories. Then he became one of the most powerful men in the Reich and would remain head of the B4 for the remainder of the Reich. In July 1940 Eichmann presented his Madagascar Plan proposing to deport all of the Jews to the Island of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa . It wasn't taking and was thrown out. In Poland Heydrich and Eichmann ordered the Jews to be rounded up and forced into a ghetto and labor camps. "The furher ordered the extermination of the all Jews that were to be killed involved with the 2 of them'', Eichmann and Heydrich later reported during both of their trials. Eichmann later reported that in 1 year he and his other Nazi leaders ordered 300,000 Jews to be killed. two months later he traveled to Minsk to watch them be killed. His description of the death pits was " ditches covered with bodies, blood, and the color of red dirt. In 1942 he helped Heydrich organize the Wannasee Conference in Berlin where he and 15 other Nazi leaders planned the killing of Jews in Europe and in the Soviet Union. A reported 11 million were killed there. Soon he ordered more gas chambers in Chelmo, Sobibor, Treblinka, and also in Auschwitz. Within a few days Hoss asked him to select the site for the gas chambers and approved the use of Zyklon-B. Since he was so interested in watching this happen he drove to the site to see the process. In 1944 he reported to Himmler and said that 4 million dead in death camps and 2 million in mobile units. Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May of 1945 he was arrested and confined to an american camp but escaped because know one knew who he was. He was also arrested in 1950 but once more escaped with the help of the SS underground unit. For a period of about 15 years he went with a secret identity of Richard Klement until abducted on the 11th of May 1960. He went on trial in the famous Nuremberg Trials and also on trial in Jerusalem both for hate crimes and death crimes. He was found guilty on all counts and was hung at Ralom Prison on May 30, 1962. |
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Shaun Kerwin You can find where I gathered this research at these sites: www.historyplace.com/WW2/biographies/Eichmann.htm or these holocaust books: Nazi War Crimals (holocaust book library) The Nazis (holocaust book library) Pictures found at: www.historyplace.com/WW2/biographies/eichmann.htm www.PBS.org/eichmann/eich.htm |