Adolf Eichmann’s executioner dies at 86
Shalom Nagar, a former Prison Services officer who hanged Adolf Eichmann, died at the age of 86.
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann stands as he listens to judges deliver a verdict on his appeal in Jerusalem on May 29, 1962. Photo by GPO/TPS-IL
Born in Yemen, he was orphaned of his father and abandoned by his mother. Nagar he made his way to Israel at the age of 14. After completing his military service as a paratrooper, Nagar joined the prison service.
Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the Nazi Germany’s Final Solution, was captured in Buenos Aires by the Mossad and spirited back to Israel for trial in 1960.
Because most of the Prison Service guards were either concentration camp survivors or had lost family in the Holocaust, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion specifically ordered that Eichmann be guarded by Sephardic Jews — who trace their ancestry to the Middle East, North Africa and Spain.
Nagar and 21 other handpicked guards stayed with Eichmann for six months at the Ramla Prison in central Israel. They watched Eichmann in shifts to prevent him from committing suicide and tasted his food in case it was poisoned.
Following an eight-month trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann was convicted of crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in a criminal organization and sentenced to death by hanging.
He was hung in the Ramla prison at midnight on May 31, 1962, the only individual ever executed by Israel. Nagar was selected by lottery to push the button that opened the trapdoor below the Eichmann’s gallows. He was also present when Eichmann’s body was cremated in a specially built oven.
A Coast Guard boat scattered Eichmann’s ashes in the sea several kilometres off the coast of Jaffa.
After retiring from the Prison Service, Nagar worked as a butcher and later was one of the founding families of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron. Nagar adopted a religious lifestyle and spent his later years in a kollel, studying Torah and receiving a stipend.
Nagar is survived by his children, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
