On 11 May 1960, Adolf Eichman was kidnapped in Buenos Aires by a unit of the Mossad (the Israeli secret service). The commando team smuggled him out of the country and took him to Israel, where he was put on trial.
By that time, Eichmann had been on the run for 15 years. After the Second World War, he had moved to Argentina under a false name, because he was afraid of being prosecuted for his war crimes. As an SS man, he was responsible for the deportation of Jews to concentration and extermination camps. Eichmann had been an important link in planning and carrying out the murder of the European Jews and is therefore also called the 'architect' of the Holocaust.
The trial against Eichmann started a year later and took four months. The whole world witnessed it, because it was reported on TV, radio, and in the newspapers. Due to the many testimonies during the trial, the general public got to know the gruesome details of the Holocaust. For the first time, the persecution of the Jews was widely discussed. Eichmann was sentenced to death and hanged on 1 June 1962.