Why was Adolph Eichmann the only Nazi official executed by Israel?

by littlepastel

Obviously he was one of the major organizers of the Holocaust and responsible for the logistics of deporting Jews to concentration camps - yet there were other Nazis captured and convicted of their crimes, and other Nazis that killed Jews with their own hands by the thousands. What "enabled" Eichmann to be tried by Israel? Why only he? Thank you!

akpth

After the fall of the Third Reich, the still-surviving high-ranking Nazi officials either were captured by the Allies or escaped abroad (often to South America, as Eichmann and Mengele did). Those captured were tried fairly expediently by the Allies- the Nuremberg Trials, for example, ended in 1946, two years before the creation of the State of Israel.

Eichmann was captured in Argentina by the Mossad 15 years after the end of the war in 1960 and smuggled out of the country to Israel, where he was tried, found guilty and executed. Effectively, Israel tried him because they could.

This being said, he was not the only Nazi killed by Israel. Other participants in the holocaust (e.g. Herberts Cukurs, a Latvian collaborator) were assassinated more discreetly by the Mossad.

TL;DR Most other Nazis were tried before the creation of Israel, Israel abducted Eichmann and thus could do as they pleased with him.