Adolf Eichmann, in full Karl Adolf Eichmann, (born March 19, 1906, Solingen, Germany—died May 31, 1962, Tel Aviv, Israel), German high official who was hanged by the State of Israel for his part in the Holocaust, the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II.
During World War I, Eichmann’s family moved from Germany to Linz, Austria. His pre-Nazi life was rather ordinary. He worked as a traveling salesman in Oberösterreich (Upper Austria) for an oil company but lost his job during the Great Depression.
Eichmann joined the Nazi Party in April 1932 in Linz and rose through the party hierarchy. In November 1932 he became a member of Heinrich Himmler’s SS, the Nazi paramilitary corps, and, on leaving Linz in 1933, he joined the terrorist school of the Austrian Legion at Lechfeld, Germany. From January to October 1934 he was attached to an SS unit at Dachau and then was appointed to the SS Sicherheitsdienst (“Security Service”) central office in Berlin, where he worked in the section that dealt with Jewish affairs. He advanced steadily within the SS and was sent to Vienna after the annexation of Austria (March 1938) to rid the city of Jews. One year later, with a similar mission, he was sent to Prague. When in 1939 Himmler formed the Reich Security Central Office, Eichmann was transferred to its section on Jewish affairs in Berlin.
