Hunting Eichmann

by Neal Bascomb

  Later that day, in a restaurant in the center of Cologne, Bauer awaited Yitzhaki, who had called for an urgent meeting but was now late. Bauer feared that something had gone horribly wrong with the mission. Finally, Yitzhaki entered the restaurant and crossed quickly to the table, his hands and clothes smeared with grease from changing a flat tire. When Bauer heard the news about Eichmann, he jumped from his seat, tears welling in his eyes, and kissed Yitzhaki on both cheeks.

  Now it was time for the rest of the world to know.

  At 4:00 P.M., Ben-Gurion entered the Knesset chamber. There were rumors that the prime minister had a special announcement to make, but none of the members, nor any of the press, had any idea what he was about to reveal. Nevertheless, they excitedly packed the hall and the public gallery. Just moments before Ben-Gurion rose to address the assembly, Isser Harel and Zvi Aharoni slipped into the gallery. It was the first time Aharoni had ever been inside the Knesset, and he was awed by its subdued grandeur.

  Then Ben-Gurion stood at the podium, and the chamber hushed. In a solemn voice cracking with emotion, he announced, "I have to inform the Knesset that a short time ago one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann—who was responsible, together with the Nazi leaders, for what they called the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question,' that is, the extermination of six million of the Jews of Europe—was discovered by the Israeli Security Services. Adolf Eichmann is already under arrest in Israel and will shortly be placed on trial in Israel under the terms of the law for the trial of Nazis and their helpers."

  Nobody moved. The members were rooted to their seats, either unsure whether they had heard the prime minister correctly or that what he had said was true. Slowly, people realized the enormity of the statement, and it was as if the air had been knocked from their chests. "When they had recovered from the staggering blow," an Israeli journalist reported that night, "a wave of agitation engulfed the hearers, agitation so deep, that its likes had never before been known in the Knesset." Many went pale. One woman sobbed. Others leapt from their seats, needing to repeat aloud that Eichmann was in Israel in order to come to terms with the news. The parliamentary reporters ran to their booths to transmit the sixty-two-word speech, which had been delivered in Hebrew.

  Ben-Gurion then stepped down and left the hall. Nobody was quite sure what to do as the chamber buzzed with the news. Harel and Aharoni slipped out as discreetly as they had entered.

  Golda Meir then attempted to deliver her scheduled speech about a recent survey by the Foreign Ministry on Israeli international relations, but few listened to what she had to say.

  Eichmann. Captured. That was all anyone in the chamber heard. Eichmann. Captured. Within hours, all of Israel and the rest of the world would be as captivated by the dramatic announcement. The stage was set for one of the century's most important trials.

  27

  ON MAY 25, AVRAHAM SHALOM took a bus back to his hotel in Santiago, Chile. He, Eitan, and Malkin had arrived in the country three days earlier, after a breathtaking journey by steam train from Mendoza through the Andes. On the day of their arrival in the capital, southern Chile had suffered a devastating earthquake, the most powerful in recorded history, which had killed thousands and sent tsunamis surging across the Pacific. Shalom had only just that day been able to send a cable to Mossad headquarters, notifying Harel that they were safe.

  He idly looked over the shoulder of a passenger ahead of him, who was thumbing through a newspaper. There, in bold letters, he saw EiCHMANN. Stunned, Shalom stumbled off the bus at the next stop. At a corner stand, he bought a whole bundle of papers, most carrying the headline BEN-GURION ANNOUNCES THE CAPTURE OF ADOLF EICHMANN. Nobody was supposed to know about the operation until they were back in Israel. When Shalom showed Eitan and Malkin the newspapers, they were equally angry, but there was nothing they could do about it.

  A few days after that, they secured flights out of the country. By chance, Shalom and Malkin were both routed through Buenos Aires and spent a worried hour on the tarmac at Ezeiza before takeoff. At last they arrived back in Israel.

  When Shalom returned home to his wife, he realized that she knew that he had been on the mission. A visit from Yaakov Gat several days before, assuring her that her husband was okay and would be home soon, had made it clear. Shalom knew that she would never utter a word about his involvement.

  Others on the team had similar experiences, despite their firm denials to the contrary. On the evening of the announcement, Moshe Tabor was with his wife in a cinema in Tel Aviv when the film was interrupted by the news. Turning to him, she said, "You were in India, I thought?"

  Tabor attempted to deflect his wife's attention, but then she told him that the toy pistol he had bought for their son was stamped from Argentina.

  At Malkin's first Sabbath dinner with his family, his brother talked of nothing else. Malkin pleaded ignorance, wanting to know what had happened while he was in "Paris" for the past month. His mother pushed him to tell them where he had really been.

  "Look, didn't you get my letters?" he asked.

  "They were like all your letters. They could have been written last year or tomorrow ... Were you involved with this?"

  Malkin desperately wanted to tell her that he had been and that he had avenged his sister. "Please, Mama ... Enough. I was in Paris."

  Aharoni made the same excuse when his brother called him unexpectedly, wanting to know when he had come back. "I'm not naive," his brother probed. "I know you were away for over two months, and I heard Ben-Gurion on the radio. I can add two and two together. Or can I? Well done!"

  A Shin Bet secretary, who had also tied Aharoni's absence to the news, embraced him on his first day back in the office. No words were needed.

  All of the operatives were proud of their success, but it was the nature of their work that, as far as they knew, they would take the secret of their accomplishment and the dangers they had faced to their graves.

  Eichmann was being held just outside Haifa, in northern Israel, at a fortified police station code-named Camp Iyar. He was confined to a ten-by-thirteen-foot cell that contained only a chair, a table, and a cot. The lights overhead were never extinguished, and a guard sat with him at all times. Another guard kept a steady watch through an opening in the reinforced door to make sure there was no contact between the inside guard and the prisoner. The prison commandant feared not only that Eichmann might commit suicide but also that there might be an attempt on his life. As added precautions, his food was always tasted before serving, and none of his guards had lost family members in the Holocaust.

  On the afternoon of May 29, at 4:30, two men crossed the courtyard from the station headquarters to the prison block. Commander Ephraim Hofstetter and his chief inspector, Avner Less, were members of Bureau 06, the police unit organized to collect evidence, interview witnesses, and interrogate Eichmann for his eventual trial. Hofstetter, who had met with Lothar Hermann early in the hunt, was the first one chosen for the unit and its elected chief deputy. He had selected Less, a keen criminal investigator and Berlin native whose father had been gassed at Auschwitz, to question the prisoner.

  The two men entered the interrogation room, a large space furnished with a plain desk and several hard chairs. They were prepared for an extended campaign to get Eichmann to talk. Secret microphones had been installed in the room. These were to be used if Eichmann did not agree to have the sessions recorded. Once they had settled themselves, Hofstetter called for Eichmann to be brought in. He had met the prisoner a few days before in Tel Aviv, where he had been a witness at Moshe Agami's and Benno Cohen's formal identification.

  Two guards led Eichmann from his cell to the room. The prisoner, in a khaki shirt and pants, looked tense, standing at attention until he was told to sit down.

  "You recognize me, I presume? I am Colonel Hofstetter of the Israeli Police."

  "Yes, sir," Eichmann replied in a sturdy, clipped voice, though both investigators noticed that his hands, unde
rneath the table, were shaking uncontrollably.

  "Mr. Eichmann, I'm told you're willing—eager in fact—to give your version of your role in the so-called Third Reich? Is that right?" Hofstetter asked, expecting the reply to be far from that.

  "Yes, that is right."

  "You are fully aware that you are not being coerced in any way?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Ever helpful, Eichmann also agreed to allow recording equipment in the chamber.

  The commander continued, "Then Captain Less will stay here with you and take your statement."

  "I think we should begin with your curriculum vitae," Less said.

  To their surprise, Eichmann began to speak at length about his personal history. As first the hours and then the days passed, however, Less noticed that the prisoner's forthrightness was far from honest—in fact, it was a deception in itself. As he had in captivity in Buenos Aires, Eichmann was rehearsing how he would defend himself in court, following the course taken by his compatriots at Nuremberg. Between chain-smoking cigarettes, he lied about his personal involvement in the atrocities until confronted with contradictory evidence, and whenever that occurred, he stated that he had been merely following orders.

  Despite his obfuscations, Eichmann never believed that he would be given a trial. He expected that the Israelis would deliver the kind of justice that he remembered from his days in the Gestapo. In the second week of June, a guard interrupted the interrogation, explaining that he was to bring Eichmann to see the judge. As they blindfolded him, Eichmann staggered, his knees giving way, and he cried out to Less, "But, Captain! I haven't told you everything yet!" He calmed down only after being assured that the judge needed to see him so as to extend the order of his detention.

  While Eichmann was being held at Camp Iyar, the impact of Ben-Gurion's announcement continued to spread. In Israel, the shock over the capture developed rapidly from pride in the accomplishment, to demands for swift revenge, to a more settled view that justice could be delivered only in terms of the letter of the law.

  There were many disparate opinions, all hashed out in endless reams of newsprint and hours of radio airtime, on who should ultimately try Eichmann: Israel, West Germany, or an international tribunal. Ben-Gurion was clear about his intentions. "The Jewish state is the heir of the six million murdered, the only heir," he wrote to a representative of the American Jewish community who wanted Eichmann extradited to West Germany. Therefore, in his view, the trial should be held in Israel to fulfill that country's "historic duty" to those killed. As for the half million Israelis who were Holocaust survivors, the majority agreed that a trial should be held in Israel. Nevertheless, they were cautious about the possible repercussions. Since the war, most had kept to themselves the sufferings they had experienced at the hands of the Nazis. They were well aware that a trial would mean a painful exposing of past wounds.

  The capture also had international implications. The Argentine government was in an uproar as soon as press reports revealed that the capture had taken place on its soil by "Israeli agents." Arturo Frondizi had no choice but to protest, since he was already enjoying tenuous relations with his military, which clearly viewed the action as a violation of Argentine sovereignty and wanted to use it to highlight his weakness. Frondizi was also under pressure from right-wing nationalists and Nazi sympathizers within the country.

  On June 1, the Argentine foreign minister, Diogenes Taboada, summoned the Israeli ambassador Levavi to demand an official explanation and the return of Eichmann. "I don't think this is possible," Levavi said. Two days later, the Israeli government delivered a communiqué explaining that a group of "Jewish volunteers, including some Israelis," had been responsible for finding Eichmann. These volunteers had "made contact" with Eichmann and received his written permission to take him to Israel, where they had handed him over to the Israeli security services. The letter concluded that Israel regretted if these volunteers had violated Argentine law but that the "special significance of bringing to trial the man responsible for the murder of millions of persons belonging to the Jewish people be taken into account." Ben-Gurion followed this formal communiqué with a personal letter to Frondizi, repeating that there had been a "supreme moral justification" for the volunteers' actions.

  The Argentines clearly did not believe that dubious story. Taboada again called for Eichmann to be returned and those responsible for the capture to be punished. The diplomatic war of words escalated, and even though Frondizi wanted to bury the affair by quietly bringing the matter to the UN, others in his government were intent on more strident measures. His UN ambassador, Mario Amadeo, a Catholic nationalist and erstwhile supporter of Benito Mussolini, led the charge in New York. Contrary to Frondizi's wishes, Amadeo pushed strongly for Eichmann's return, as well as for a UN vote of condemnation against Israel. The UN called an emergency Security Council meeting to discuss his complaint. Despite a stirring speech from Golda Meir in defense of Israel, Amadeo won not only his condemnation but also an order for Israel to make "appropriate reparations." Attached to the resolution, however, was a statement declaring that the UN understood that Eichmann should be brought to justice. The stalemate between the two countries persisted until late July, when Levavi was declared persona non grata in Argentina and forced to leave. In the end, this was the only action required for Frondizi to save face.

  Even so, some in Argentina were keen to punish the Israelis. Unable to strike against them directly, right-wing groups unleashed a string of attacks on the Jewish community in Argentina. Tacuara carried out the worst of the incidents, beating up several Jewish students at the University of Buenos Aires and chanting "Long live Eichmann. Death to Jews." One student was shot, and later, in a vicious assault, Tacuara radicals branded a swastika onto the chest of a teenage girl whose father was suspected of having helped the Israelis. Nick and Dieter Eichmann hung a swastika flag in front of their Garibaldi Street house and talked tough.

  Vera Eichmann called upon the Argentine courts to instigate proceedings against those involved in her husband's kidnapping. On July 12, a judge approved the case and launched an investigation, aided by the Argentine security services. None of Harel's team was in harm's way, but Luba Volk, who had signed her name to numerous documents related to the El Al flight, was still in the country. One afternoon when she was driving to her house in Belgrano, she sensed that a car was following her. After a few turns, she was certain of it, but whether it was the police or some vigilantes, she did not know. She went straight to the Israeli embassy, where security officials instructed her not to leave her house alone at night and to watch over her son carefully.

  Volk tried to ignore the fear she felt, carrying on with her day-today activities as much as she could. A week later, she and her husband were called to the office of Joel Baromi, the acting Israeli ambassador. Baromi informed them that he had reliable intelligence that the Argentines, prompted by the proceedings brought by Eichmann's wife, were going to arrest Volk for her connection to the flight.

  "Get out of this country as soon as you can, and by any means you can—legal or illegal," Baromi advised.

  The next day, Volk and her family packed their most important belongings into a few bags and boarded a small plane to Uruguay. After a couple of weeks in Montevideo, she and her son traveled to Israel. Her husband followed shortly after, his business career in shambles because of his hasty exit from Argentina and the rumor that he was actually a Mossad agent.

  By the fall, relations between Argentina and Israel had improved, and the case instigated by Vera Eichmann faltered. Investigators failed even to discover the names of those who had returned on the El Al flight. The Mossad had covered its tracks too well. In addition, the impetus to continue with the inquiry met with resistance, no doubt because of the embarrassment of various Argentine agencies, including the police and security services, at having been outwitted.

  The other major player in this drama was West Germany. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer publicly chastised
Israel for the kidnapping and for its commitment to trying the war criminal. He was supported by a host of his country's top newspaper editors, who demanded that Eichmann be extradited and "tried by judges instead of by avengers." But Adenauer never made any serious attempt to extradite Eichmann, knowing that the Israelis would not relinquish their right to try him. Still, as the trial approached, Adenauer grew increasingly worried about what Eichmann might reveal about the war activities of his national security adviser, Hans Globke. Israeli and West German officials made back-channel efforts to ensure that the trial did not embarrass the chancellor's government.

  THE ACCOUNTANT OF DEATH and EICHMANN'S STORY, PART 1: I TRANSPORTED THEM TO THE BUTCHER were the headlines in the German magazine Der Stern and the American magazine Life, respectively. Throughout the fall of 1960, both magazines published serial installments of Eichmann's memoirs, drawing millions of readers across the globe into the mind and history of the Nazi war criminal. One issue recounted a scene in late 1941 when Eichmann had seen the first preparations for exterminating the Jews: "General Heydrich ordered me to visit Majdanek, a Polish village near Lublin. A German police captain showed me how they had managed to build airtight chambers disguised as ordinary Polish farmers' huts, seal them hermetically, then inject the exhaust gas from a Russian U-boat motor. I remember it all very exactly because I never thought that anything like that would be possible, technically speaking." Such statements revealed Eichmann's callous disregard for his victims' suffering.

  The memoirs came from the 850-page typescript that Willem Sassen had made from his taped interviews with Eichmann. Within days of Ben-Gurion's announcement, Sassen had approached publishers around the world to sell the rights to the interviews. For a share of the proceeds, he even convinced Vera Eichmann to grant permission for the sale. She later declared that she had had no idea of the nature of their content.