Photo Gallery The Hunt for Adolf Eichmann
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann standing in a protective glass booth during his trial in Israel in 1961. Eichmann was convicted for his role in organizing and carrying out the Holocaust and ultimately executed.
Eichmann played a central role in ensuring that the vast murder of European Jewry perpetrated by the Nazis was done swiftly and efficiently. In a drunken conversation with a friend, Eichmann admitted that up to six million Jews had been killed.
Eichmann was responsible for the deportation of Jews from Western Europe, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Greece to the extermination camps. He was the prototypical behind-the-scenes mastermind, an unscrupulous bureaucrat who never killed anyone with his own hands.
Eichmann determined who was to board the trains to Auschwitz and Treblinka immediately and who would be deported later. Eichmann ensured that his men coordinated the transports. Figures showing the current status of the genocide were displayed in the offices of his section on Kurfürstenstrasse in Berlin.
A document from Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), on Eichmann. Just how much Germany knew and when remains a question of some dispute.
An image of a Red Cross Travel Document created for one Ricardo Klement, an alias of Adolf Eichmann. This document enabled Eichmann to leave Europe via Italy and travel to Argentina.
Horst Carlos Fuldner, pictured here, helped Eichmann obtain the documents he needed to enter Argentina. Fuldner had been a member of SS head Heinrich Himmler's staff.
Adolf Eichmann listening to the verdict in his trial in December 1961. In addition to organizing mass murder, Eichmann forced inmates in the death camps to send postcards to friends and relatives, using text that he had penned: that they were in a beautiful place, went on excursions and were not required to work hard -- and that everyone else should hurry to the camps because most of the accommodations had already been taken.
In the closing days of the war and immediately thereafter, Eichmann found refuge with fellow SS members on the shores of Austria's Altaussee Lake.
Ultimately, however, he had to move on because his presence made the others nervous. He headed north and found a new home in the town of Altensalzkoth near Celle.
Not long after the war, the Cold War began occupying US attention while Israel also seemed to lose interest in hunting Eichmann down. But he didn't trust the lull and decided to make a run for Argentina.
Eichmann followed a well trodden path out of Germany and out of Europe. He found Nazi sympathizers along his entire route over the Alps and into Argentina.
