(Jewish Group) How Adolf Eichmann murdered Superman -- and was sentenced to death for his crimes
Sixty years ago, on Dec. 15, 1961, Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death, following one of the most publicized trials in history. Improbably, it became the basis of a Superman comic book.
A chief architect of the Holocaust, Eichmann oversaw the Jews’ deportation to the extermination camps. After the war, he fled to Argentina, a non-extradition country, where in May 1960 he was captured by the Mossad in a daring operation. He was brought to stand trial in Jerusalem, where he stood behind bulletproof glass. He was convicted and sentenced to death in December 1961, the only capital punishment to ever officially be carried out in the history of Israel.
Superman comics in the 1960s, a period known as the Silver Age, were known for their whimsical, outlandish, kid-friendly stories. Many were baffling mysteries or “imaginary” tales — uncanonical what ifs — in which Krypton is never destroyed, or Superman is never found by the Kents, or he transforms into a monkey, or grows an ant’s head, or marries a mermaid. It’s a strange context in which to explore Holocaust themes, but that’s exactly what happened.
Superman’s writers were still almost entirely Jewish then, including co-creator Jerry Siegel and auteur editor Mort Weisinger, and their stories were often surprisingly emotional, full of passion and pathos. The Last Son of Krypton was a man haunted by the loss of his people and culture, desperately driven to prevent the same fate from befalling his new home and to be accepted there.
The peak of this gravitas, and Jewish themes in Superman’s Silver Age adventures, was November 1961’s “The Death of Superman!” in Superman #149, by Siegel and artists Curt Swan and George Klein.
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