Adolf Eichmann was born in Solingen in 1906 and executed in Tel Aviv in 1962. In 1932 he joined the Austrian NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and the SS. In 1939 he was appointed to the RSHA (Reich Main Security Office). From March 1941 he headed Amt IV B 4 and, in this capacity, was responsible for ‘Jewish Affairs and Evacuation’. Hence he became the central ‘bureaucratic’ organiser of the deportation of Jews living under the Nazi regime in Europe and the architect of the ‘Final Solution’.

Eichmann escaped from an American prison camp in 1946 and fled to Argentina in 1950. After being kidnapped by Israeli secret agents he stood trial in Israel in 1961 for war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity. The court ruled that Eichmann was a key figure in the ‘Final Solution’ and sentenced him to death.

• J.Th.M. Houwink ten Cate, De naam van de misdaad en de persoon van de schrijftafelmoordenaar (Amsterdam 2003).

Collection ‘Eichmann Trial’, Archive of the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation