27 Facts About Shalom Nagar

Shalom Nagar was a Yemeni-born Israeli prison guard best known for executing Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

Shalom Nagar was stationed at Ramla Prison when he became one of 22 guards assigned to Eichmann during his trial and imprisonment.

Later, Shalom Nagar worked as a prison guard in Hebron and a kosher butcher.

Shalom Nagar helped establish the Kiryat Arba settlement but left after the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.

Shalom Nagar's story was featured in the 2010 documentary Hatalyan and inspired the novel Eichmann's Executioner.

Shalom Nagar was born in Yemen in the mid to late 1930s.

Shalom Nagar's father died and he was abandoned by his mother, consequently living on the streets from the age of seven, according to his son Boaz.

Shalom Nagar later moved to Israel; this was at age 14 according to World Israel News, and in 1948 according to the BBC, The Times of Israel, and Haaretz.

At 18, Shalom Nagar joined the elite Israel Defense Forces' Paratroopers Brigade.

Shalom Nagar was working at Ayalon Prison in Ramla in the early 1960s when the war criminal and Nazi Party official Adolf Eichmann was held there during the trial for his role in The Holocaust.

Shalom Nagar guarded Eichmann for six months, and was always in the presence of other guards.

Shalom Nagar said he had been randomly selected to carry out the execution after Eichmann's sentencing to death in December 1961.

Such was the secrecy around the execution that Shalom Nagar's commander collected him for the duty by bundling him into a car while he was walking in the street with his wife, Ora Shalom Nagar, and their infant son.

Shalom Nagar was concerned that she would believe he had been kidnapped, so they returned to say he had been called in as the prison was short staffed.

Shalom Nagar described arriving at the gallows when Eichmann already had the noose around his neck and was stood over a trap door.

Shalom Nagar said he looked into Eichmann's eyes before stepping behind a screen to pull the lever.

Shalom Nagar said that the loud gasping sound of air being released from the corpse's lungs made him feel that "the Angel of Death had come to take me too".

Shalom Nagar struggled; his hands were shaking and he had difficulty walking unaided.

Shalom Nagar was one of the first Israelis to guard imprisoned Palestinians under the newly formed Israeli Military Administration.

Shalom Nagar claimed to have been the first to suggest that settler leader Moshe Levinger and the fourteen families who originally settled in Hebron be given living quarters converted from King Hussein's former stables.

Shalom Nagar refused, later saying he had "had enough trauma".

Shalom Nagar said that he was sworn to secrecy over the execution, but after Mossad chief Isser Harel had published a book about Eichmann's capture he felt he had nothing to fear, saying: "Besides, I was involved in the great mitzvah of wiping out Amalek", referring to a biblical commandment in Judaism to erase the memory of an enemy nation of the Israelites.

Shalom Nagar was present at the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron in 1994.

Shalom Nagar died on 26 November 2024, with reports placing his age at 86 or 88.

Shalom Nagar was survived by his wife Ora, and three of their four children.

Shalom Nagar was the subject of a 2010 documentary, Hatalyan, by Avigail Sperber and Netalie Braun.

Shalom Nagar explained: "Like the character played by Tom Hanks, Nagar improbably finds himself in the midst of historical events and meeting famous people".