The kidnapping of a humble clerk, a middle-level Gestapo manager, is considered one of the best Mossad operations. This is how it was.
In the postwar years, Adolf Eichmann became the # 1 target for Israeli Nazi hunters. The head of Subdivision IV B 4 in the Gestapo was directly responsible for the genocide of the Jews. It was only possible to track him down in 1960. Eichmann hid far, far away from Israel.
Adolf Eichmann in Germany, 1942. Photo: Wikipedia. Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Photo from the Yad Vashem archive.
Vigilant Blind
Lothar Herman helped the Israelites to get on the trail of Eichmann. A German Jew who passed through the Dachau concentration camp managed to escape to South America and settle in Buenos Aires. His daughter Sylvia met a young man named Klaus in the late 1950s. The guy boasted that his father was not the last person in the Third Reich.
In October 1959, the German-language Argentine newspaper Argentines Tageblatt reprinted an interview with Tuvia Friedman, director and sole employee of the Israel Institute for Documentation and Investigation of Nazi Crimes. For information about Eichmann, he promised a reward of $ 10,000. By that time, the almost blind Herman wrote a letter to Friedman:
For several months the information was checked by Israeli agents sent to Argentina. The final identification took place in the spring of next year. Observers recorded a big celebration at the house of suspect Ricardo Clement - on the day when Otto Adolf and Veronica Katharina Eichmann were supposed to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
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Eichmann had moved from Austria to Argentina ten years earlier. He got a job as a clerk in the local Mercedes-Benz branch. Two years later, he returned to Europe, married his own wife under a new name, and took her with him with his three sons.
Mossad director Isser Harel (left). Photo: gpophoto.gov.il Lothar Herman (right). 1935 Photo: Wikipedia
GET IN 20 SECONDS
The Israeli leadership assumed that an official request for Eichmann's extradition would only lead to his next disappearance. The Argentine authorities not only turned a blind eye to the entry of Nazi criminals, but actively helped them to hide.
The operation to kidnap Eichmann was led by Mossad director Isser Harel. All 30 of its participants were volunteers, all of them suffered from the Nazis or lost relatives during the Holocaust. Through a specially created dummy travel company, the Israelis, one by one, from different countries and at different times, flew to Buenos Aires. Eichmann was planned to be taken out by plane for the official delegation that arrived in Argentina to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the country's independence. There was no regular air service between Argentina and Israel at the time.
On the evening of May 11, seven participants in the operation in two cars awaited Eichmann from work. Finally he got off the bus and walked towards the house. The agent called out to him in Spanish "Un momentito, señor!" and threw him to the ground with lightning speed. The others dragged Eichmann into the car. They did it in 20 seconds.
Eichmann's ID in the name of Ricardo Clement. Photo from the Yad Vashem archive.
Refugee ID. Issued by the Red Cross to an SS officer, head of the Gestapo department, Adolf Eichmann, addressed to Ricardo Clement. Photo: Fundacion Memoria del Holocausto.
Eichmann's house in Argentina. Photo: Zvi Aharoni / Yad Vashem Archive
ON THE VILLA
Eichmann spent the next 9 days in a villa rented by Israelis in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. Already at the first interrogation, he gave his real name and the NSDAP party card number. The members of the task force were strictly forbidden to show aggression. It was not easy for them: even the cook could hardly restrain herself so as not to poison Eichmann.
If the police appeared, the participants in the operation had to deny any connection with the Mossad. This connection was denied later: the case was declassified several years ago. Fortunately, the police never showed up. Members of the German community of Buenos Aires, who combed the city, did not find refuge either. On the evening of May 20, Eichmann was given an injection that left the prisoner able to walk, but blocked speech. He was dressed in the uniform of an Israeli pilot.
At the Buenos Aires airport, the escorts showed the border guards a passport in the name of a real pilot, Rafael Arnon. The day before, Mossad agents organized a fictitious car accident for him to explain to the border guards why he was boarding in a semi-conscious state. The medical report "… can reschedule the flight under medical supervision" was attached.
Eichmann on a plane en route to Israel, 1960. Photo: Zvi Aharoni / Yad Vashem Archive.
Arrest procedure for Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Photo: gpophoto.gov.il
Eichmann in a cell awaiting trial. Photo: gpophoto.gov.il
The trial lasted 1.5 years. During this period, Eichmann had to be protected especially carefully: there were too many people who wanted to commit lynching. He was taken to the hearings in an armored vehicle; in court, the accused was behind bulletproof glass. The prison guards were also carefully selected. The prisoner's food was checked for poisons.
Eichmann was accused of leading all operations to deport European Jews to death camps during World War II. He claimed that in his work he simply followed the orders of his superiors and the laws of the Third Reich.
The death penalty in Israel was abolished back in 1954, but an exception was made for Adolf Eichmann. On the night of May 31 to June 1, 1962, he was hanged. The body was burned in a specially designed oven, and the ashes were scattered over the Mediterranean Sea outside Israeli territorial waters.
There was an international scandal. The Argentine government accused Israel of kidnapping, demanded the return of its citizen and appealed to the UN about this. Only 40 years later, in 2000, the Argentine president apologized to the victims of the Holocaust for harboring war criminals in his country.
Svetlana Voroshilova
