A photo combo dated circa April 1961 before the opening in Jerusalem of nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s trial shows the empty court room with portraits of Eichmann (L) and chief Prosecutor Gideon Hausner. [Getty]
The man who hanged Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962, Shalom Nagar, has died, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the “Final Solution” aimed at wiping out Europe’s Jews, was guarded by Nagar during the six months he was imprisoned at an Israeli prison.
In 1960, an Israeli Mossad team kidnapped Eichmann from his home in Argentina after fleeing Nazi Germany.
He was drugged and smuggled back to Israel, where he was put on trial by an Israeli court in April 1961 for genocide in a landmark televised court case.
He was hanged on May 31, 1962 at Ramleh prison near Tel Aviv, the only person ever to be executed in Israel.
Nagar was a prison service employee at the time and chosen to hang Eichmann.
Eichmann, 55 at the time of his trial, had organised the logistics of the Final Solution that sent some six million Jews to their deaths during World War II.
Born in Yemen, Nagar moved to Israel in 1948 and became religious after leaving the prison service.
A documentary film was made about Nagar in 2011.
“For a year, I had nightmares because of him,” he said in the film of Eichmann.
He lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement in the occupied West Bank, according to media reports.
