Shalom Nagar, who was a reluctant 23-year-old Israeli prison guard when he was chosen to hang Adolf Eichmann — the fugitive Nazi war criminal convicted of crimes against humanity and genocide in the murder of six million Jews — died on Nov. 26 in Israel. He was in his late 80s.
His death was confirmed by Avigail Sperber, who directed “The Hangman,” a 2010 film about Mr. Nagar, with Netalie Braun. Ms. Sperber did not say where he died. His age has been reported by various sources as 86 or 88.
For decades, until a radio station identified him in 2004, Mr. Nagar (pronounced nah-GAR) hid his connection to the Eichmann execution, fearing retribution from neo-Nazis. But the hanging, at midnight, always haunted him.
On May 31, 1962, he was out walking with his wife, Ora, and his infant son when a police van screeched to a halt and whisked him away. Mr. Nagar knew it meant that the time of Eichmann’s execution had been set and that he was being called back to work as executioner. He persuaded the driver to turn around and assure his wife that he wasn’t being kidnapped.
Before the execution — the only case of capital punishment in Israel’s history — Eichmann asked for white wine and cigarettes. He refused a blindfold.
Mr. Nagar’s role was to release the trapdoor on the gallows, sending the prisoner plunging 30 feet to his death. But what was worse, Mr. Nagar recalled, was the grisly aftermath: removing the noose and conveying the prisoner’s corpse on a wobbly stretcher to a specially built oven to be cremated.
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