On this day in 1961, Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death for his crimes against Jews and others during the Holocaust.

The Eichmann trials took place in Jerusalem and began April 11, 1961.

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Let’s quickly go over how big of an asshole Eichmann was.

Adolf Eichmann, 1906-1962, was born in Germany and raised in Austria. He joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1933.

From the beginning of his career within the SS, Eichmann was involved with the deportation of Jews.

After the outbreak of WWII, Eichmann arranged the first deportation of Jews to Nazi-occupied Poland.

In March of 1941, Eichmann became the director of Jewish Affairs.

He was responsible for organizing the deportations of millions to the killing centers in the east.

There were thousands of labor and concentration camps in Europe, but there were six extermination camps in Poland built for the sole purpose of eradication.

These were: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz Birkenau, and Majdanek.

3.5 of 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust died at these killing centers.

Adolf Eichmann is responsible for sending them to their immediate death.

Post war, 1946, Eichmann escaped custody and settled in Buenos Aires under the name Ricardo Klement. He lived quietly and comfortably with his family while working at a Mercedes Benz factory.

He was arrested my Mossad agents May 20, 1960 and sent to Jerusalem to be put on trial.

Trial began April 11, 1961.

The Israeli Attorney General and Chief Prosecuting Attorney Gideon Hausner declared in his opening speech to the court, “With me here are six million accusers. But they cannot rise to their feet and point an accusing finger towards him.”

Eichmann never denied that the Holocaust took place, or that he even had some involvement in carrying out the orders. He was, in his own words, “merely a little cog in the machinery” of the destruction.

He was only following the orders of others, acting out of “blind obedience.”

On his last day of testimony, however, Eichmann did admit guilt for arranging the transport of millions of Jews to their deaths to the various extermination and concentration camps – but he did not feel guilty of the outcome.

In his memoir he wrote, “To sum it all up, I must say that I do not regret anything.”

The Eichmann Trial in Israel sparked international interest in the crimes committed against Jews and others during the Holocaust. Many historians date the Eichmann Trial as when the term “Holocaust” became a part of the public consciousness.

Unlike the Nuremberg Trials, the Eichmann Trial put Holocaust survivors on the center stage, and many of their stories and testimonies of survival and grief were shared for the first time since liberation.

On December 12, 1961, Adolf Eichmann was found guilty of several of the charges brought against him as one of the key perpetrators of the Holocaust.

On December 15, 1961, Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death.

Adolf Eichmann was executed by hanging on June 1, 1962.

(Photos from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.)