Tribunal at Nuremberg The Allies commenced legal proceedings against captured Nazis, establishing the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945. The first war crimes trial of 24 prominent figures such as Hermann Göring, Albert Speer, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, and Kaltenbrunner took place beginning in November 1945. They were accused of four counts: conspiracy, waging a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of international law. Twelve received the death penalty, including Kaltenbrunner, who was convicted of crimes against humanity and executed on 16 October 1946. The former commandant at Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, who testified on behalf of Kaltenbrunner and others, was tried and executed in 1947. Additional SS trials and convictions followed. Many defendants attempted to exculpate themselves using the excuse that they were merely following superior orders, which they had to obey unconditionally as part of their sworn oath and duty. The courts did not find this to be a legitimate defense. A trial of 40 SS officers and guards from Auschwitz took place in Kraków in November 1947. Most were found guilty, and 23 received the death penalty. In addition to those tried by the Western allies, an estimated 37,000 members of the SS were tried and convicted in Soviet courts. Sentences included hangings and long terms of hard labor. Piotr Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, estimates that of the 70,000 members of the SS involved in crimes in concentration camps, only about 1,650 to 1,700 were tried after the war. The International Military Tribunal declared the SS a criminal organization in 1946. Escapes After the war, many former Nazis fled to South America, especially to Argentina, where they were welcomed by Juan Perón's regime. In the 1950s, former Dachau inmate Lothar Hermann discovered that Buenos Aires resident Ricardo Klement was, in fact, Adolf Eichmann, who had in 1948 obtained false identification and a landing permit for Argentina through an organization directed by Bishop Alois Hudal, an Austrian cleric with Nazi sympathies, then residing in Italy. Eichmann was captured in Buenos Aires on 11 May 1960 by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. At his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Eichmann was quoted as having stated, "I will jump into my grave laughing because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews [or Reich enemies, as