The Nazi Hunters

by Neal Bascomb

  Not finding a bell at the gate, Juan called out for Nick Klement. When nobody answered, he stepped around to the back of the house, where he found a man and a woman. “Excuse me, please,” Juan said. “But do you know whether Mr. Klement lives here?”

  “You mean the German?” the man asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The one with the three grown sons and the little boy?”

  “I don’t know,” Juan said. Truly, he had no idea.

  “Those people used to live here, but now they have moved. Maybe two to three weeks ago.” The man suggested that Juan speak to one of the workmen inside the house.

  Juan showed the card and gift to a carpenter. “Can you tell me where I can find him?” Juan asked. “I have to deliver it personally.”

  The carpenter told him that the family had moved to a neighborhood called San Fernando. He offered to take Juan to where one of Klement’s sons worked as a mechanic, just a block away.

  Approaching the garage on the next corner, the carpenter pointed out a moped he said belonged to Klement’s son. Then he shouted, “Dito!” A young man in his late teens, wearing oil-stained overalls, headed over. “This guy would like to speak to your father,” the carpenter told him.

  Juan had no idea if he was looking for the father or the son, only that the addressee’s name was Nick Klement. He explained why he had gone to the house and that he had just learned the Klements had moved. Curtly, Dito said he had his facts straight.

  “Where have you moved to?” Juan asked.

  “To Don Torcuato.”

  Juan hesitated a moment before asking Dito to give the package to Nick Klement.

  “I’d like to know who gave you that,” Dito said.

  In keeping with the cover story Aharoni had provided, Juan explained that he did not know the name or anything else about the young lady who had given his friend, a bellboy at an upmarket hotel, the package to deliver. He asked could he just have Mr. Klement’s address in order to make the delivery himself.

  Dito shook his head, saying that the area had no street addresses. At last, however, he agreed to take the package. Sensing that he had pressed him enough, Juan left.

  Listening to Juan’s report, Aharoni grew excited and thanked him for a job well done. Now he knew for certain that a German family named Klement had lived at the Chacabuco address until only a few weeks before. They had four sons, one of whom was roughly the same age and had a similar-sounding name to Dieter Eichmann. Not only was the trail still alive, they might even have found one of Eichmann’s boys.

  On a map, Aharoni located the two neighborhoods to where Juan had been told the family had moved. Don Torcuato and San Fernando were more than three miles apart. Given this discrepancy, as well as the facts that the family had not left a forwarding address and Dito had refused to give his, Aharoni concluded that the Klements had something to hide — another sign that they might be the Eichmanns.

  Aharoni decided to risk finding out more information from the workers at the house. Later that day, he drove “Lorenzo” to 4261 Chacabuco. The sayan had the looks, suit, and smooth manner of the salesman he was pretending to be. Two visits on the same day was incautious, and this second one only confirmed that Ricardo Klement had once lived at the house.

  Confident in what he had learned, Aharoni cabled Harel a message in a prearranged code: “The driver is red,” meaning that Klement was likely Eichmann. He added that their target had recently moved and that he was attempting to locate him. Once Aharoni sent the code “The driver is black,” Harel would know that Eichmann had been found and the operation to capture him could be set in motion.

  On March 8, Aharoni and Juan waited in the Fiat on Monteagudo Street, keeping watch on the early-evening traffic. Anybody leaving Dito’s shop would have to drive by them to reach the neighborhoods of San Fernando or Don Torcuato to the north. Aharoni was depending on Dito to lead him to Eichmann, and this was the third afternoon they had spent waiting for him to pass.

  At 5:15 P.M., a dirt-spattered black moped whirred past the Fiat from the direction of the shop. Its driver, a man in his fifties, wore dark glasses. Riding behind him, holding his shoulders, was a young blond man wearing overalls. Juan pointed him out, almost certain it was Dito.

  Aharoni started the car and shifted quickly into gear. He followed the moped through the traffic, remaining unseen. Ten minutes later, after a series of turns, the moped swung down an alley by a railroad station in San Isidro, the neighborhood directly southeast of San Fernando.

  The young man dashed into a building, coming out two minutes later. Again, Aharoni and Juan followed. When they reached the center of San Fernando, they lost the bike among the cars and trucks jammed around the main square. Catching sight of it again, Aharoni turned off the square to follow and found himself abruptly halted by a funeral procession. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel as the moped disappeared from view.

  Over the next week, Aharoni attempted to trail Dito with two other teams of sayanim. On the first night, during a heavy downpour, the moped didn’t show. On the second, this time in a rented station wagon, Aharoni followed the moped, again with two riders, back to San Fernando. There he switched cars with two of the young Argentines helping him. He almost lost the moped again around the square. When the bike reached Route 202, the major highway that ran past Don Torcuato, Aharoni trailed at a distance, since only a few cars remained on the road. The moped pulled up at a roadside kiosk close to a railway embankment. A scattering of houses and wooden huts marked the barren, flat land. Aharoni slowed down as he drove past, then he circled back toward San Fernando.

  On the third night, Aharoni and Juan shadowed a lone young man who left the garage on a moped. When he stopped at a house on the way to San Fernando, Aharoni sent Juan out for a closer look. A few minutes later, he came back and said the young man was probably not Dito.

  Aharoni swelled with anger. They had wasted a week since Juan first went into the house on Chacabuco, learning nothing. Now they had followed the same individual several nights in a row, at great risk of being spotted, and they were still unsure if they were trailing the right person. This had to stop. They had to get either the new address of the Klement family or confirmation that it was indeed Dito they were tailing.

  “Go back tomorrow,” Aharoni instructed Juan. “Tell him your friend is angry. He claims that you never delivered the present and he wants the money from you. Get the address where they live so you can speak to Mr. Klement, or at least make sure you have a good look at the boy. Don’t tell me you’re not sure: I need a yes or a no.”

  On March 12, as instructed, Juan returned to 4261 Chacabuco Street. The carpenter who he had met before was there, and he felt bad for Juan. Although he didn’t know the street name of the Klements’ new house, he could give exact directions to get there: Juan should go to the San Fernando station, take the 203 bus to Avellaneda Street, and ask at the corner kiosk for the Germans’ house. It was an unfinished brick house with a flat roof only a few hundred yards from there.

  Juan thanked the carpenter and walked over to the mechanic’s shop. Dito came out into the yard. “And what do you want this time?” he said. Juan told his story again, how his friend was facing a charge of 500 pesos.

  Dito grew hostile. “How come? If that girl wanted to send it to my brother, why didn’t she write down his real name?”

  Later that afternoon, Aharoni waited nervously for Juan at a café near the Israeli Embassy. When the young man finally appeared, his usual smile was gone, and he looked exhausted. “What happened?” Aharoni asked, now more worried than before.

  Juan explained halfheartedly that he had good directions to the Klements’ new house. Aharoni was flummoxed as to why this would depress him: This was what they had been trying to find out. Juan then said, “We followed the wrong guy. The name’s not Klement. It’s Eichmann.”

  Aharoni almost leapt from his seat onto the table, but he kept himself calm. “Ah. Never mind. D
on’t worry about it,” he said. He thanked Juan for a job well done and urged him not to speak to anybody, ever, about their time together. In parting, Aharoni promised, “We’ll find the right guy.”

  The next day, Aharoni crawled along Route 202 in his rented station wagon and passed a kiosk on his left. The directions the carpenter had given Juan had played out perfectly so far. Aharoni remembered coming to this same kiosk a few days before while following the moped. A railway embankment crossed the road, but otherwise the area was level and almost completely featureless. It was a poor, sparsely populated section of San Fernando, without telephone or electrical lines.

  He spotted a one-story brick house with a large wooden door and tiny windows. The masonry was unfinished and the roof flat — just as the carpenter had described. With its barred windows and surrounding chicken-wire fence, the house looked more like a jail than a home. Aharoni noticed a woman sitting on the edge of the porch. A young boy, no older than six, played at her feet. Aharoni suspected he was looking at Vera Eichmann and her fourth son, who would have been born since she came to Argentina. He continued under the railway bridge, stunned at the poverty in which the family was living — worse even than the Olivos house. But it was the right place; Aharoni was sure of that. Now all he needed was proof that Klement was indeed Eichmann.

  Surveillance photos of Eichmann’s house on Garibaldi Street.

  On March 16, 1960, Zvi Aharoni went into the San Fernando civil administration headquarters with “Michael,” an architect who had emigrated from Israel several years before. They knew that no one could buy land and build a house without leaving a paper trail. Using false names and a cover story — that they worked for an American company that wanted to build a sewing factory — they asked for the names of the people living near where the rail line intersected Route 202. The clerk guaranteed an answer the next day.

  Aharoni wanted to photograph the woman he had seen sitting on the porch with her son, to compare her with pictures he had of Vera Eichmann. He drove with Michael to the Klement home, and they parked in front of a neighbor’s house. Michael carried a clipboard, and Aharoni had a briefcase with a hidden camera. The lens was behind a hole in the side, and a small button by the handle took the photographs.

  The neighbor, a middle-aged woman, came out of her house when she saw them. While they were speaking with her, Aharoni snapped a few pictures of the area. Then a black-haired woman in her early twenties approached from the direction of the Klement house. By her looks and accent, she was a native Argentine, and her tone and body language made it clear she wanted them gone. “What’s the name of your employer?” she demanded. “What sort of factory were you planning?”

  She clearly didn’t believe their cover. Aharoni wanted to get out of there straightaway. They were in serious danger of being exposed. As Michael began to explain their sewing business, the woman cut him off, wondering aloud why anyone would want to build in an area without electricity or water. Surely they were up to no good.

  “It’s possible there’s been a mistake and we’ve confused the area,” Aharoni said before turning to Michael and pointing toward the railway. “Let’s continue our inquiries on the other side.”

  They thanked the woman for her help, retreated to the car, and drove away. Aharoni prayed he had not just tipped off Adolf Eichmann. He needed to be more careful.

  The next day he learned that their efforts to get a list of landowners had failed. The building office did not keep records on the area, though Aharoni did learn that the street the house was on was named Garibaldi Street.

  Michael had an idea. Much of that part of San Fernando had been purchased by a single company that had then resold the land in smaller lots. That company might have the information they needed. The next day, he presented Aharoni with a piece of paper. “I found the registered owner of plot 14,” Michael said. “It’s Veronika Liebl de Fichmann.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you. That’s exactly what I’ve been looking for,” Aharoni said. The misspelled name had to be either a clerical error or a deliberate attempt to confuse searchers. Now Aharoni just needed to see Ricardo Klement for himself.

  The next day, he went to San Fernando. He had switched cars yet again and was now behind the wheel of a black DeSoto. With him was an embassy secretary, and together they looked like any couple out for a weekend drive.

  Coming down Route 202, Aharoni looked over at the Klement house on Garibaldi Street. A man was in the yard, taking down the washing. Aharoni slowed down. He was at least fifty years old, had a thin build, and was probably between 5 feet 7 and 5 feet 9 inches tall, balding, with a high, sloped forehead.

  Before Aharoni could reach for his briefcase camera, the man collected the last garment from the line and returned to the house. But Aharoni knew the face, no question. He had spent hours staring at photographs of it in the Eichmann file.

  Photo of Eichmann that Aharoni likely used to identify him in Argentina.

  “Why are you looking so happy?” the embassy secretary asked. He had not realized that a wide grin had spread across his face.

  “I just remembered that today is my mother’s birthday,” he said. “Let’s go and celebrate.”

  Later, he sent Harel a cable with a single line of code: “The driver is black.”

  In Tel Aviv, Isser Harel was ready for Aharoni’s message.

  Over the past few weeks, with classical music playing on his transistor radio, he had run through the many challenges they would face if the operation went ahead. It would occur almost 9,000 miles away, in a country few of his agents knew and whose language even fewer of them spoke. They would be traveling under false identities, completely alone and without official cover. Their target had been an officer in the SS, one of the most deadly security forces ever known. He had intimate knowledge of surveillance and operational tactics, and he knew how to defend himself. During the war, he had never moved about unarmed.

  Buenos Aires had a large German community, including some former Nazis. There were many people within the Argentine halls of power who had no love for Israel or the Jews. At such a distance, communication between Harel’s agents and Tel Aviv would not be easy or quick. If the agents were discovered, they would face imprisonment or worse. Israel would have no end of international political problems, and the black mark against the Mossad would inhibit its activities in other countries.

  For all these reasons, the mission could not be allowed to fail.

  It would comprise three parts: First, they needed to capture Eichmann alive, without being seen. Second, they would have to keep him in a secure location, avoiding detection, for an indeterminate period of time, until, third, they could smuggle him out of Argentina. Nobody could know who had taken him, or how, until he was in an Israeli prison and all Harel’s agents were safe.

  If the mission succeeded, Harel knew that not only would the Mossad earn its place among the top intelligence agencies in the world, but also — much more important — the Jewish people would see justice done to one of the leading organizers of the Holocaust. The world would be forced to remember what had happened, and it would be reminded that such horrors must never be repeated.

  Zvi Aharoni lay on an old mattress in the back of a Ford pickup, peering out with his binoculars through a hole cut in the tarpaulin that covered it. His driver for the day, yet another sayan, was inside the nearby kiosk eating a late breakfast. They had parked facing the kiosk, which gave Aharoni a perfect view of the Eichmann house, 160 yards away.

  The truck used by Aharoni during surveillance.

  Although Aharoni was certain that he had identified their target, he had set himself one more task. He wanted a good photograph of Eichmann. While watching for him to come out of his house, he took several shots of the surrounding area for the operations team that would execute the capture. He also sketched a map of the neighborhood, with key roads and landmarks.

  At noon, Eichmann unexpectedly strode past the truck from the direction of the
kiosk. He must have left the house that morning before Aharoni had arrived. Eichmann headed down Route 202, then turned left before Garibaldi Street, crossing an empty field to get to his house. Aharoni got a long, clear look at him. He was dressed in brown slacks, an overcoat, and a green tie. He wore glasses, was mostly bald, and had a prominent nose and broad forehead. He walked slowly, with a deliberate gait.

  Aharoni felt even more sure that this was the right man. Unfortunately, however, Eichmann was too far away for him to get a good photograph. For the next hour, Aharoni watched. When Eichmann got to his house, he spoke to a boy playing in the garden, straightening the child’s shirt and trousers. He swatted at a cloud of flies around the front door before going inside. Later, he came out wearing casual cotton pants, bought some bread from a horse-drawn cart, and fetched something from the shed. His son Dieter came home, and the whole family went into the house, probably to have lunch.

  Later that night, Aharoni was back in San Fernando for more surveillance. He drove a faded red jeep and was accompanied by “Avi,” an embassy official, and his wife. Aharoni had seen couples parked in the area at night and knew that the two would provide good cover. Wearing overalls and carrying a pair of binoculars, he left the jeep and crept toward the house. His aim was to get a look at the interior, in case the operations team needed to go inside.

  The dark night was ideal for such a goal. However, there were no lights on in the house. Aharoni returned to the jeep only a few minutes after he had left it. To his shock, it was gone. He walked around the area, and before long he saw the jeep, fifteen yards away, lying in the ditch beside the road. He could hardly believe his eyes.

  Avi and his wife were huddled in the ditch beside the vehicle. They had tried to turn it around without switching on the headlights, thinking they might need to make a fast getaway. Avi had not noticed that the road was raised, and he had backed straight into the ditch. Aharoni was livid, but his anger paled beside his fear that the Eichmann family, whose house was less than 150 yards away, might discover them. Either they or their neighbors would realize that the strangers were all foreign — and possibly that they were Israelis — and Eichmann would know without doubt that he was under surveillance. They would never see him again.