to Vienna where he created the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. This agency had the sole authority to issue permits to Jews desperately wanting to leave Austria. Eventually, the Central Office for Jewish Emigration became involved in extorting wealth from the Jews in exchange for safe passage. Nearly a hundred thousand Austrian Jews managed to leave with most turning over their worldly possessions to Eichmanns office. This concept was so successful that similar offices were established in Prague and Berlin.On November 7, 1938, Eichmann was in Vienna when a Polish Jew assassinated Legation Third Secretary, Erwin vom Rath. A nationwide pogrom called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) took place on November 9-10, 1938. Eichmann was ordered by Reinhard Heydrich to lead the raids in Vienna. Eyewitnesses reported that Eichmann was seen moving from one synagogue to another to supervise the destruction. He was described as exhilarated by the assignment (Liverpool 222). Within a few days of Kristallnacht, Eichmann sent his first shipment of Jews to the concentration camps. In June 1940, after the invasion and subsequent fall of France, Eichmann presented his Madagascar Plan, a plan proposing the deportation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar. He would organize a special fleet of German ships to transport four million Jews to Madagascar after paying their own way. Nothing ever came of the proposed Madagascar Plan despite Eichmanns attempt to make it happen. By the summer of 1941, Eichmann had been promoted to Chief of Subsection IV-B-4 of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the Reich Central Security Office. This is the subsection that was to become the most notorious agency of the Nazi killing apparatus. This is when he was told that the Fuehrer had ordered the physical extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was informed that he was the one chosen to annihilate the remnants of European Jewry. That same winter,...
