Eichmann (5th from right) at a raid, Vienna, 18 March 1938

Adolf Eichmann

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This photo was taken during an SS raid in Vienna in 1938. Dressed in a black uniform, Adolf Eichmann – who later prepared the protocol of the meeting in Wannsee – is standing at the front to the right. Seven years after this photo was taken, the end of the war was looming – and with it the end of the Nazi dictatorship. By then, Eichmann had long made plans to go underground.

In 1950, he managed to escape to Argentina under a false name. In Buenos Aires, he met regularly with other escaped Nazis. Against their better judgment, they defamed the protocol of the meeting as a forgery and reports of mass murders as Jewish propaganda. Yet while their convictions led them to vehemently deny the mass murders and try to uphold their own revisionist view of the Nazi period, Eichmann saw his life’s work in danger. So rather than claiming the document was a forgery, he not only revealed himself as participant of the meeting, but also the person who summarised the minutes.

Eichmann was one of those primarily responsible for the persecution and murder of Jewish men, women and children from all over Europe. In May 1960, he was kidnapped by the Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Service, and smuggled out of Argentina to stand trial in Jerusalem. Eichmann’s subsequent trial is hugely significant for both Germany’s and Israel’s culture of remembrance since it played a major part in breaking the pall of silence in both countries over these unprecedent events. Nonetheless the two approaches were fundamentally different: in Israel from the perspective of the victims and survivors, and in Germany from the perspective of the perpetrators and bystanders.

At the end of trial, Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed.