The Nazi Hunters

by Neal Bascomb

  After some inquiries, they got directions to Lothar Hermann’s house. Hofstetter went to the door alone, Ilani staying behind in case there was any trouble. Several moments after Hofstetter knocked, the door opened. Hofstetter introduced himself to Hermann. “My name is Karl Huppert. I sent you a telegram from Buenos Aires to tell you I was coming.”

  Hermann indicated for Hofstetter to come into his living room. The Israeli policeman could not place what was wrong with Hermann or with the room, but something was amiss. Only when Hofstetter held out his letter of introduction and Hermann made no move to take it did he realize that the man was blind.

  He couldn’t believe it. Isser Harel had sent him to check on a sighting of Adolf Eichmann by a man who could not see.

  He lost his skepticism, however, when Lothar Hermann and his wife, who came into the room to read the letter, explained in detail how they had first grown suspicious of Nick Eichmann and how their daughter had tracked down his address.

  “Don’t think I started this Eichmann business through any desire to serve Germany,” Hermann said. “My only purpose is to even the score with the Nazi criminals who caused me and my family so much agony.”

  The front door opened, and Sylvia came in, calling out hello to her parents. She stopped on seeing Hofstetter, and her father introduced “Mr. Huppert.” Sylvia confidently told him about her visit to the Eichmann house.

  “Was there anything special about the way he spoke?” Hofstetter asked her.

  “His voice was unpleasant and strident, just as Dr. Bauer described it in one of his letters.”

  Hofstetter asked her if these letters might have steered her wrongly to think the man at the house was Eichmann.

  “No,” she said bluntly. “I’m one hundred percent sure it was an unbiased impression.”

  “What you say is pretty convincing,” Hofstetter said, impressed by her straightforwardness, not to mention her courage in going to the Eichmann house alone. Everything she said matched the information he had been given in Tel Aviv. “But it isn’t conclusive identification. Vera Eichmann may have married again — we’ve heard many such rumors — and her children may have continued using their father’s name.” He explained that he needed to know the name of the person living with Vera and her sons, as well as where he worked. He also wanted to get any photographs of him or his family, any documents with his name, and, in the best case, a set of his fingerprints.

  “I’m certain I’ll be able to get you your proof,” Hermann said. “I’ve got many friends in Olivos, as well as connections with the local authorities. It won’t be difficult for me to get these things. However, it’s obvious I’ll have to travel to Buenos Aires again, my daughter too … This will involve further expense, and we simply can’t afford it.”

  Hofstetter reassured Hermann that his people would cover any expenses. He instructed that all their correspondence be sent to him at an address in the Bronx, New York, care of an A. S. Richter. He tore an Argentine dollar in two and gave one half to Hermann. Anybody with the other half could be trusted.

  After two hours of planning and discussion, Hofstetter thanked the family and left. He reported back to Harel that the Hermanns were reliable but that more information was needed and that they seemed capable of gathering it.

  On April 8, 1958, Sylvia and her father visited the land-records office in La Plata, the capital city of the province of Buenos Aires. A clerk brought them the public records on 4261 Chacabuco Street, and Sylvia read the details out to her father. An Austrian, Francisco Schmidt, had bought the small plot on August 14, 1947, to build two houses.

  Eichmann was Austrian, Lothar knew. “Schmidt” must be the alias under which he was living. Excited by this discovery, Hermann and his daughter took a train to Buenos Aires to seek confirmation. Through a contact at the local electricity company, they found that two electric meters were registered at the address, under the names “Dagoto” and “Klement.” When Hermann located the people who had sold Schmidt the land, he was given a description that resembled the one Bauer had sent and that his daughter had confirmed on her brief visit to the house.

  The following month, the Hermanns returned to the city for five days to continue their investigation. They discovered a photograph of Nick, but their attempts to get one of Eichmann, or his fingerprints or any identity documents, failed.

  On May 19, Hermann wrote to “Karl Huppert” in New York, recounting their investigation of the past six weeks. “Francisco Schmidt is the man we want,” he stated confidently. Further investigation would require more funds, he continued, and he should “hold all the strings” in pursuing the matter. Hermann was convinced that his discoveries would be met with a call to action. His letter wound its way from Argentina to New York to Israel, arriving at the Mossad headquarters in Sarona in June 1958.

  Isser Harel was skeptical about its contents from start to finish. Just because Schmidt was listed as the owner of the land where a Nick Eichmann lived did not prove that Adolf Eichmann inhabited the house, nor under that alias. Hermann’s demand for more funds and to “hold all the strings” stank of a potential scam. Hermann was too certain and wanted too much control — both factors Harel distrusted by instinct and experience. Harel trusted his intuition, and it told him that not only was Yoel Goren right in thinking that the former Nazi officer could not be living in the poverty he had witnessed, but also that the information Lothar Hermann had sent in his report was suspect at best and fantasy at worst.

  Just to be sure, Harel cabled Ephraim Ilani in Buenos Aires to ask him to check on Francisco Schmidt. At the end of August, Ilani reported that Schmidt was not Eichmann, nor did he live at the Chacabuco Street address. He was merely the landlord. Hermann had the wrong man. Harel informed Bauer of his conclusions and ended all correspondence with Lothar Hermann.

  The trail went cold once again.

  A year and a half later, in early December 1959, Fritz Bauer turned off the lights in his Frankfurt office and picked up his suitcase. He was headed to Israel, this time with certain proof that Adolf Eichmann was in Buenos Aires.

  Bauer had set up a meeting with Haim Cohen, the Israeli Attorney General. Isser Harel had disappointed him by shelving the first investigation. He suspected that Harel would refuse to get involved unless he knew the identity of Bauer’s new source. This was information Bauer could not reveal, because the person was too important politically. To this day, it is still a German state secret.

  Bauer had no other option than to go to the Israelis. His suspicion that the West German government would not act against former Nazis had been proved again and again. He planned to ask Haim Cohen to put as much pressure as possible on Harel to investigate. As he headed out of the building and into a waiting car, Bauer could only hope that the fugitive was still within somebody’s grasp.

  Zvi Aharoni and Isser Harel sat in silence in the back of a chauffeur-driven sedan. The car threaded its way through the streets of the pine-covered Judean Hills outside Jerusalem. Aharoni was the chief interrogator for the Shin Bet. Earlier in the day, Harel had informed him that they were expected at the Ministry of Justice in Jerusalem for a meeting with Haim Cohen and Fritz Bauer. Cohen had specifically asked for Aharoni, as they had worked together on several espionage and high-treason cases and were both gifted with the same cold, logical intelligence.

  Zvi Aharoni.

  It was only when Aharoni was in the car that Harel told him about Adolf Eichmann. Aharoni was not surprised. Harel’s agents knew only what they needed to know — no more, no less. He was shocked that Harel had relied on the Hermanns to conduct the inquiries; he had been in Buenos Aires himself for six weeks earlier in the year on another mission and could have pursued some of the leads. However, one did not question the chief of the Mossad.

  Aharoni scanned the reports sent from Lothar Hermann as the car made its way through the maze of steep streets to the Ministry of Justice on Jaffa Street. On arrival, Harel and Aharoni walked up to the second floor, where Coh
en and Bauer were ready for them. Bauer launched straight into business, detailing the new intelligence he had received. The most important piece of information was the alias under which Eichmann lived: “Ricardo Klement.” It was one of the names that had turned up in the Hermanns’ investigation the previous year.

  Bauer’s bushy gray eyebrows flared as he spoke. He was incensed that the first investigation had dismissed the Hermanns’ reports. “This is simply unbelievable!” he said angrily. “Here we have the name Klement: Two completely independent sources, who are strangers to each other, mention this name. Any second-class policeman would be able to follow such a lead! Just go and ask the nearest butcher or greengrocer and you will learn all there is to know about him!”

  Harel tried to calm Bauer, explaining that this new intelligence changed the dynamic of the investigation. Bauer was still furious. He threatened to begin extradition proceedings through official German channels if the Israelis refused to act immediately. Though Harel thought that Bauer was bluffing, he reassured him that this would not be necessary. They wanted Eichmann found and were ready to act.

  Cohen spoke up. “I want Zvi to go to Buenos Aires and check out this story once and for all. We can’t play around with this any longer.” Harel agreed, now persuaded that his interpretation of the Hermann reports had been wrong. Aharoni would go to Germany to collect the intelligence documents that Bauer had gathered over the past two years. Then he would travel to Argentina.

  The meeting ended with warm handshakes.

  On December 6, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion ushered Isser Harel into his office. Though equal in height to his intelligence chief, the man known as the founding father of Israel had a much more commanding presence: the lantern jaw and instinctive aggressiveness of a fighter, combined with the wild white hair and searching intellect of an artist. In his early seventies, Ben-Gurion was nearing the end of his time as leader of the new nation, but his eyes were as bright and intelligent as the day in 1948 when he had announced the establishment of the state of Israel. Harel and Ben-Gurion were very close, having depended on each other over the past decade not only for Israel’s benefit, but also for their own personal holds on its many levers of power.

  Haim Cohen joined them shortly after, and Harel recounted their conversation with Fritz Bauer, emphasizing that the German Attorney General now had intelligence detailing where Eichmann lived and under what alias. Ben-Gurion was impressed by the courage Bauer had shown in coming to them again — this time personally — with the information. Harel told the Prime Minister that Bauer had threatened extradition proceedings in West Germany if Israel failed to pursue his leads.

  “Prevent Bauer from taking this step,” Ben-Gurion said. “If Eichmann is there, we will capture him in order to bring him here.”

  Harel knew this type of operation would present enormous challenges and tax the Mossad’s limited resources. A quicker, easier solution might be to assassinate Eichmann. His people were well practiced in these operations: One day the Argentine police would discover Ricardo Klement in a car crash or some other mishap, and the world would not need to know that Adolf Eichmann was dead — nor that the Israelis had killed him.

  But Ben-Gurion was clear. He wanted Eichmann alive to stand trial in Israel for his crimes against the Jewish people. Cohen had concerns about this plan. Legally, West Germany had much more of a right to try Eichmann than Israel, a state that had not existed when the crimes were committed. Ben-Gurion instructed the Israeli Attorney General to come up with a justification. As for the capture operation, he had complete faith in Harel, writing in his diary that night, “Isser will deal with it.”

  Three weeks later, on Christmas Eve, those in West Germany who looked fondly on their Nazi past made their presence known. In Cologne, two young men painted huge swastikas and “Juden Raus” (“Jews Out”) across the walls of a synagogue and on a memorial to those who had resisted Hitler. In the following days, anti-Semitic attacks and demonstrations broke out across West Germany, and police were stationed outside synagogues and Jewish cemeteries to prevent further desecrations. In total, 685 Jewish locations throughout the country were vandalized. These were more than the isolated actions of a few hooligans, and Jewish leaders in West Germany made it clear that the scene “evoked pictures that bring to mind the November days of 1938,” referring to Kristallnacht.

  People gather outside the desecrated synagogue in Cologne, Germany, 1959.

  West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer promptly broadcast on the radio that these acts were intolerable, but it was plain that much more was needed to stop the rise of neo-Nazism. The German Reich Party, a radical group with Nazi sympathies, had made gains in a recent election. Membership in militant and nationalistic organizations was increasing, as were the numbers of newsletters and daily papers, book clubs, and discussion groups whose followers despised the “Bonn democracy” (referring to the capital of West Germany) and wanted to “correct the accepted facts” about Hitler and German war guilt.

  A New York Times reporter described an “almost nationwide need to pull the blinds on the past” in West Germany. Schoolteachers were found to be teaching incorrect information about Hitler’s regime. A ninth-grade textbook devoted only a single paragraph to the “Jewish question” during World War II. Extermination camps went without mention.

  All of these trends were noticed in Israel with grave concern. Soon after the Cologne incident, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, asked Isser Harel about the possibility of a Nazi revival. Even to these high officials, Harel could not reveal the major blow he intended to deliver to such a revival: the capture of Adolf Eichmann. Harel was now convinced that Ben-Gurion was right. Bringing the fugitive to justice and airing his crimes in a public trial would remind the world of the Nazi atrocities, and the need to remain vigilant against any groups that aimed to repeat them.

  On March 1, 1960, Zvi Aharoni stepped up to Immigration Control at Buenos Aires’s Ezeiza Airport. His Israeli diplomatic papers identified him as Mr. Rodan of the Foreign Ministry. He explained in his rough Spanish that he had traveled to Argentina to investigate reports of an outbreak of anti-Semitism in South America. The guard studied the passport and then the man who had handed it to him. Aharoni had the kind of long, sober face that made it difficult to guess his thoughts, which was always an advantage in his interrogation work.

  The guard stamped his documents without inspecting the sealed diplomatic pouch Aharoni carried under his arm, which contained everything the Israelis knew about Eichmann. Aharoni knew that another “maybe” in the Eichmann file would be useless. Harel needed a definitive answer before he could launch a mission.

  Aharoni was met at the airport and brought to the Israeli Embassy by a man known only as “Yossef,” the embassy head of security and the only person in Argentina aware of the reason for his visit. Aharoni locked his Eichmann files in an embassy safe; after long study, he knew most of the facts by heart.

  Two days later, he rolled slowly down Chacabuco Street in a rented Fiat. “Roberto,” a twenty-year-old Argentine student with a thick black mustache, sat next to him, studying a street map. Roberto was one of the sayanim — Jewish volunteers who were available to help Mossad agents with surveillance, transport, safe houses, or medical aid, or simply by standing on a corner and waiting for a messenger. They went by aliases, so even now their real names are not known. Without them, the small Israeli secret service would not have had anything like the reach it did. Having volunteered for other Mossad operations in the past, Roberto knew to keep his inquiries to a minimum.

  Driving past 4261 Chacabuco, Aharoni stole a glance at the small house with its unkempt garden. He stopped a few blocks away on a side street, wondering how he could get a good look at whoever lived there. He fished a postcard of a tropical island, which he had bought at the airport, out of his pocket. He told Roberto to write on the back in Spanish, “Have just returned. Best regards, George,” along w
ith a fictitious name and address. He also instructed him to put “Dagosto” (a variation of Dagoto, the name under which one of the electric meters at 4261 Chacabuco was registered) and 4263 Chacabuco in the sender box. The address was nonexistent, but the card would give Roberto a reason to ask neighbors if they knew the sender. Because the postcard lacked a stamp and postmark, Aharoni warned Roberto not to let anyone inspect it too closely.

  Roberto walked off while Aharoni stayed in the car. Three years had passed since Sylvia Hermann had walked down this street. The Nazi fugitive might well have moved house, and if he had, the chance of finding him again would be slim in a city of more than five million people spread across seventy-one square miles.

  Twenty minutes later, Roberto hurried back to the car. He waved the postcard and slid into the passenger’s seat. He explained that he had spoken to a young girl about the Dagosto family and had peered, undetected, through the windows of 4261 Chacabuco. Nobody in the neighborhood was named Dagosto, but Roberto had seen some painters working inside the house. The house was unoccupied. The Eichmanns had moved.

  Aharoni was undeterred. The next day, March 4, “Juan,” a baby-faced eighteen-year-old Argentine with a constant grin, opened the gate at 4261 Chacabuco Street. He had in his hand a gift-wrapped box containing an expensive cigarette lighter. It was addressed to Nikolas Klement, Vicente López, 4261 Chacabuco. Slipped under the ribbon was a note in flowery script written by an embassy secretary: “For my friend Nicki, in friendship, on his birthday.”

  Aharoni had given Juan instructions to go to the address and find out where “Nick Klement” had moved. His cover was that he had a gift to deliver. Under no circumstances, Aharoni warned, was Juan to go to the new address himself.