Documentary Feature · 2010 · 62 minutes

The Hangman

A human portrait of Shalom Nagar, the man who executed Adolf Eichmann.

The administrator of the mass deportation of Jews to the Nazi death camps, Adolf Eichmann, was hanged in Israel's first and only execution. Shalom Nagar, a religious Jewish ritual slaughterer and street philosopher who believes in charity, was the hangman. Through intimate conversations and archival footage, the film follows Nagar — a marginalized Sephardi prison warden forced to carry out the execution of the state's arch-enemy — and traces how this national burden shaped both his life and the country's moral imagination. His work as a slaughterer in an abattoir, combined with memories of his past, creates a complex portrait of a man who repeatedly finds himself at the edge of historical events, yet remains humane, humorous, and deeply faithful. Shalom's voice, rarely heard and long pushed to the margins of Israeli history, offers an alternative perspective — one that reveals a profoundly humanistic and universal message.