Shalom Nagar, hangman of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, dies

Shalom Nagar, the man who hanged Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1962, has died in his late 80s.

Nagar, a prison guard at the facility where Eichmann was kept, was chosen for the task and did not volunteer. He said he had nightmares about it for years afterwards.

The hanging was the only judicial execution ever held in the state of Israel.

Eichmann, one of the leading architects of the Final Solution aimed at wiping out Europe’s Jews, was abducted by Israeli agents from Argentina in 1960 and sentenced a year later after a landmark public trial.

Nagar was born in Yemen in the late 1930s and moved to Israel as an orphan in 1948. His exact age is not clear.

After serving in the military, he joined Israel’s prison service and was selected as a personal guard for Eichmann at Ramle prison. His duties included tasting the prisoner’s food in case it was poisoned.

He said he was selected at random to carry out the execution, and Eichmann was hanged on 30 May 1962.

Nagar’s identity remained secret for another 30 years, amid fears of reprisals, but was revealed by Israeli journalists in 1992.

In the following years he gave a series of interviews, providing sometimes graphic details of the hanging and its aftermath.

He explained that after the deed was done, he was told to load the corpse into an oven for cremation, but his hands were shaking and he was unable to walk unaided.

For some time afterwards he suffered from PTSD and nightmares. He later became religious and moved to the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, media reports say.

A documentary called The Hangman was made about him in 2010.

Eichmann played a key role in the 1942 Wannsee Conference at which the Nazis’ annihilation of European Jewry was planned, and was seen as the logistical mastermind of the Final Solution.

He lived incognito in Germany after the end of World War Two and fled to Argentina in 1950.

Israeli intelligence located him in 1960, kidnapped him and brought him to Israel to stand trial on charges including war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people.

He did not deny the charges or the Holocaust but said he was following orders.

After a trial that was filmed and broadcast on TV, he was convicted on most counts and sentenced to death.