Adolf Eichmann

Article summary

Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ; ; 19 March 1906 – 1 June 1962) was a German-Austrian official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a convicted war criminal, and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Following this, he was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and Nazi extermination camps across German-occupied Europe. He was captured and detained by the Allies in 1945, but he escaped and eventually settled in Argentina. In May 1960, he was tracked down and abducted by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and put on trial before a special tribunal of the Jerusalem District Court. The highly publicised Eichmann trial resulted in his conviction in Jerusalem, following which he was executed by hanging in 1962. After doing poorly in school, Eichmann briefly worked for his father's mining company in Austria, where the family had moved in 1914. He worked as a travelling oil salesman beginning in 1927, and joined both the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932.…

Key claims

1. date of birth: 1906-03-19 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
2. date of birth: 1936 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
3. date of birth: 1952 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
4. date of death: 1960 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
5. publication date: 1982 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
6. release date: 2016 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. The record states that the date of birth is "1906-03-19". What evidence would count against this claim?
3. The record states that the date of birth is "1936". What evidence would count against this claim?
4. The record states that the date of birth is "1952". What evidence would count against this claim?
5. The record states that the date of death is "1960". What evidence would count against this claim?
6. The record states that the publication date is "1982". What evidence would count against this claim?
7. The record states that the release date is "2016". What evidence would count against this claim?
8. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
9. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1378578691