Shalom Nagar, the prison guard and executioner of Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, has passed away today (Wednesday).
On May 11, 1960, the Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann, the man who orchestrated the Final Solution in a quiet suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina. After a dramatic trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann was sentenced to death and hanged on June 1, 1962. The identity of the executioner was initially kept secret to shield him from potential retaliation by neo-Nazis.
In May 2004, the world learned the executioner’s name: Shalom Nagar. A former Israeli Prison Services officer, Nagar was retired, and immersed in Torah study at a kollel, when German media contacted him for a possible interview. He agreed but only if it took place in the kollel.
During the interview, Nagar recounted his six-month assignment as one of 22 guards selected to oversee Eichmann. A Yemenite Jew with no direct ties to Holocaust victims, Nagar and his colleagues were chosen to avoid personal bias. His duties included guarding Eichmann, ensuring he did not take his own life, and tasting his food to prevent poisoning.
After the execution, Nagar cremated Eichmann’s body, ensuring the ashes were scattered beyond Israel’s territorial waters to avoid defiling the land.
When asked why he insisted on the noisy kollel for the interview, Nagar faced the camera and declared, “Because I knew millions of Germans would watch this, and I wanted them to see the enduring life of Jewish study and spirit - a stark contrast to what Eichmann tried to destroy.”
“Rather, we’re here with those books that They burned by the hundreds of thousands; we’re here with those traditions! I want you to see the Talmud Bavli, Talmud Yerushalmi, Midrash Rabba, Rambam, the Rif, the Taz … they’re alive. We are alive!", Nagar concluded.
A documentary film called “The Hangman” (2011), told Shalom Nagar's story. We learn from the film that he was among those who contributed to the establishment of Kiryat Arba, a city near Hebron, in the 1970s, and that he was even invited, with great honor, to live there. He also closely witnessed the massacre of Muslim worshipers committed by Baruch Goldstein at the Cave of the Patriarchs.
* The Jewish Herald Voice contributed to this article.