Nazi Adolf Eichmann saw his wife before being executed in Israel

History buffs might be intrigued to learn that Israeli authorities permitted Adolf Eichmann's wife, Vera, to see him before he was hanged on May 31, 1962.

The Jerusalem Post has reported that the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee decided to grant her request, which was passed along by her lawyer to then justice minister Dov Yosef.

The prime minister at the time, David Ben-Gurion, reportedly worried that Israel could have been criticized for refusing the visitation.

The foreign affairs minister and future prime minister, Golda Meir, also didn't want to hurt Israel's standing in the world.

Eichmann played a central role in the Holocaust. He provided statistics to Nazi SD leader Reinhard Heydrich on the number of Jews in various European countries at the notorious 1942 Wannsee Conference. That's where Heydrich outlined plans for genocide.

Later, Eichmann supervised deportations to concentration camps where Jews, homosexuals, and others were murdered.

Eichmann eventually escaped to Argentina where he lived under a false name until he was captured by the Mossad. He was taken back to Israel to stand trial.

He never admitted any personal guilt and was not convicted of killing anyone himself. However, Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against Poles, Slovenes, and the Roma people.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote a book about the trial called Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. She maintained that the Nazi bureaucrat was astonishingly stupid and not psychopathic.