SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) and head of the Department for Jewish Affairs, from 1941 to 1945. He was responsible for the deportation of most of the Jews to ghettos and then the extermination camps. Born into a middle-class Calvinist Protestant family, his family moved to Linz, Austria, where he spent his youth. Studying electricity in college, he intended to become an electrical engineer, but dropped out of school to begin work in the sales department of an Austrian electrical construction company, and later, as a traveling salesman for an Austrian oil company. In 1932, he joined the Austrian Nazi Party, and quickly became a member of the SS. In 1934, he was promoted to Squad Leader (SS-Scharführer) in the SS, and was assigned to the Dachau Concentration Camp. Later that year, he joined the SD (Sicherheitsdienst = "Security Service") under the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), and attracted the attention of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS) and Reinhard Heydrich (Deputy Reichsführer-SS, and head of the SD) with his enthusiasm and work efficiency. In 1935, he was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in the SD and began working on solutions to "the Jewish Question," quickly become recognized as an expert on Jewish affairs. In 1937, he traveled to British controlled Palestine, to discuss the possibility of large scale Jewish emigration to the Middle East, but returned without any success. In 1938, he set up the Vienna Center for Jewish Emigration, and its success as a model of efficiency was quickly copied in other cities. In 1939, he was made Director of Section IVB4, Jewish Affairs and Evacuation, and under Eichmann, set up the first ghettos. By 1941, Eichmann's "resettlement" department began the tasks of setting up the death camps, developing gassing techniques, and organizing convoys to take Jews to the death camps. In January 1942, he organized the Wannsee Conference that determined the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, and authorized the extermination camps. From 1941 until the end of the war, Eichmann assumed a leading role in the deportation of Jews to the Death Camps, and for the seizure of Jewish property. At the end of the war, he was arrested by American authorities, but escaped to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he lived under the assumed name of Ricardo Klement for ten years, working for the Water Company. In 1960, the Israeli Mossad (Israeli Secret Service) abducted him to stand trial for war crimes in Israel. The trial, from 2 April to 14 August 1961, sentenced him to death, and he was executed in Ramleh Prison, Jerusalem, on 31 May 1962. His body was subsequently cremated, and its ashes dispersed. During his trial, he stated, "I was only following orders," a defense that has since been universally rejected by all International War Crimes Tribunals.