by Isser Harel
Ilani was right about Barhon’s willingness to respond to every call. Before very long, the fellow was sitting at my table in the café. After looking him over, I asked if he would be prepared to do something I described as ‘not difficult, but at the same time not pleasant’. I explained that the assignment itself might seem trivial to him but would actually serve a very important purpose, even if I couldn’t tell him what that purpose was.
Barhon had no idea who I was, but he didn’t ask questions. He trusted his friend Ilani when he said, ‘It’s O.K.’ Without a second’s hesitation, he said he was ready to do anything he was told.
I was sorry I had to give such a passive role to such a husky fellow, but I told him I hoped to find him a more active assignment some other time. All he had to do now, I said, was to go to a hospital and ask to be admitted. He would say he had had a road accident and was suffering from a concussion. I told him our doctor would brief him on what to say to the doctors at the hospital and how he should act while he was there. Barhon grinned and, pointing to his scar, said he was an expert on hospitals.
When he arrived at the hospital, I explained, he was to tell the doctors that he had come to Buenos Aires to fly back to Israel on the plane bringing the Israeli delegation to the anniversary celebrations. He was to harp on the fact that he wanted to return to Israel on that plane, regardless of his state of health. It was because of the accident that he was so eager to get home quickly, and the special plane was providential for him because it would get him there without unnecessary moving around and long intermediate stops. The doctor who would be briefing him, I said, would also tell him how to stage a recovery step by step, so that the hospital doctors would allow him ‘to travel by plane when the time came. All the time he was in the hospital he would be briefed on what to do.
Our doctor spent the day in town because security regulations forbade him to return to Tira before dark, so he took the opportunity to meet Meir and describe the symptoms of brain concussion. ‘At the hospital,’ the doctor said, ‘you must say you were in the back seat of a car at the time of an accident and that all you can remember is that the car stopped suddenly and you lost consciousness. When you opened your eyes, you found yourself at your hotel. From then on, you’ll claim, you have suffered from vertigo and a general feeling of malaise. The doctor went on to tell how these symptoms could gradually disappear. Barhon said that he understood and promised that his illness would proceed along the lines of his instructions.
After the meeting, Ilani took Barhon back to his hotel, where Barhon told the staff about the ‘accident’ he had just been involved in and asked them to call a doctor. With Ilani’s help, Barhon described the circumstances of the imaginary accident, and the doctor ordered him into the nearest hospital immediately. After the doctor in the casualty ward had heard the story of the accident, he insisted that the patient be kept under observation and given a series of tests.
Soon a professor with his entourage of students appeared in the ward, and one by one the pupils examined the patient under their teacher’s instructions. In the evening there were blood tests, and the next morning his head was X-rayed. Bar-hon’s only fear was that during the course of these exhaustive tests his doctors might discover some real sickness he hadn’t reckoned on.
22
WHILE BARHON was receiving the best of care and attention at the Argentine hospital, Avrum and his detail organized frequent reconnaissances of the roads to determine the best route for transferring Eichmann from Tira to the airfield. Dozens of times they drove over the various roads between the two points, at all hours of the day and night, to choose the most convenient time and the safest route.
The city was beginning to show signs of the approaching festivities. The police and other security agencies were taking every precaution to maintain quiet and order in the country and to insure the safety of the honored guests at the anniversary ceremonies. On all roads in and around the capital, and especially those leading from the airport to the city, police patrols were making frequent appearances. Police escorted the foreign visitors into the city and the local celebrities to the airport to welcome the new arrivals. Here and there roadblocks were set up and cars were searched.
Since we didn’t know what the police were looking for, we had to be prepared for anything. Thus, for our own travels, we chose side streets and secondary intersections which were not on routes used for the visiting dignitaries and their reception committees. As we got closer to the airport on our reconnaissances our choice of alternatives narrowed, and near the entrance to the field we had to return to the main road and travel in the company of visitors’ cars, the police, and the army.
Because of the volume of traffic on the roads and the preparations at the airfield itself, we decided Eichmann would have to be drugged when we took him to the airport. Although he had been cooperative from the first, we couldn’t trust him among strangers, especially during a security check. So he would have to be anesthetized, the dosage to be adjusted according to road conditions and the various stages of the operation. We discussed it fully with the doctor, and he undertook to handle this aspect of the transfer and to assume responsibility for the prisoner’s welfare.
At the safe house an unusual relationship had developed between the prisoner and Eli, who attended to his personal needs during his captivity. Eichmann seemed to sense that this warden was particularly kindhearted. Perhaps the attraction was deeper because Eli was the man who tackled him on that fateful night outside his house in San Fernando.
Anyway, they began to chat – the captor in piquant Yiddish and the captive in Austrian-accented German – and their talks grew longer and eventually filled the time that Eli spent with the prisoner. It soon became clear that it was impossible to make Eli observe the regulation against holding conversations with the prisoner.
Eichmann, in his blind adulation of force, seemed to look upon the man who had brought him down as a person whose authority must be submitted to, and he never missed an opportunity of fawning on him and groveling to obey every order. He made no attempt to escape, and even dared to express concern about the fate of his family.
‘I didn’t leave them any money,’ he said. ‘How will my wife and sons live?’
‘No harm will come to them,’ Eli replied. ‘They’ll manage all right without you. But tell me, please, you who worry so much about your children, how could you and your colleagues murder little children in the tens and hundreds of thousands?’
Eichmann almost sobbed. ‘Today I can’t understand how we could have done such things,’ he said. ‘I was always on the side of the Jews. I was striving to find a satisfactory solution to their problem. I did what everybody else was doing. I was conscripted like everyone else – I wanted to get on in life.’
Contempt and pity were intermingled in Eli’s attitude to the man. He tried in vain to imagine him dressed in uniform, arrogant and cruel, as he had been in the past. He simply couldn’t. He still saw the wretched, despicable, pitiable creature in front of him. Now and then he would accede to his requests for wine, even though this annoyed Rafi.
‘I can’t understand how you can treat me so decently,’ Eichmann used to say.
Once, when Eli brought Eichmann a small record player, Yitzhak burst angrily into the room, shut off the music, and took the machine away with him. It was therefore not surprising that Eichmann felt he could consult Eli about signing the statement that he was willing to be tried in Israel, and it was on Eli’s advice that he announced he would sign it. The text we offered him contained nothing but his agreement in principle to travel to Israel and stand trial there, but Eichmann wasn’t satisfied with it; he preferred to compose his own version:
I, the undersigned, Adolf Eichmann, declare of my own free will that, since my true identity has been discovered, I realize that it is futile for me to attempt to go on evading justice. I state that I am prepared to travel to Israel to stand trial in that country before a competent court. I understand that I
shall receive legal aid, and I shall endeavor to give a straightforward account of the facts of my last years of service in Germany so that a true picture of the facts may be passed on to future generations. I make this declaration of my own free will. I have been promised nothing nor have any threats been made against me. I wish at last to achieve inner peace. As I am unable to remember all the details and may be confused about certain facts, I ask to be granted assistance in my endeavors to establish the truth by being given access to documents and evidence.
(Signed) Adolf Eichmann
Buenos Aires, May 1960
All along we kept following the Argentine press, but it contained not even the slightest reference to Klement’s disappearance. Ilani devoted a considerable portion of his time to reading the Spanish newspapers, while the others – including the men at large in Buenos Aires as well as those in the safe house – shared the German and English papers. No item of news or small announcement escaped the eyes of the readers, but every day the newspaper check ended with the same result: not even a hint, not even a sign.
The men at Tira regarded this as cause for anxiety. They supposed that Klement’s disappearance would have repercussions in the country and expected at the very least to find notices requesting the public to assist in the search for him. They would have interpreted such notices as evidence of failure of the search, whereas the absence of any mention of disappearance seemed to them a bad sign – it led them to conclude that their opponents were acting in secret and didn’t want to show their cards.
My opinion, as I have said, differed from theirs. Not only did the silence not cause me any concern, but I even regarded it as a confirmation of my first hypothesis that Eichmann’s family and his friends among the Nazi exiles would be in no hurry to share with the authorities their concern about the missing man. I regarded the complete silence surrounding Klement’s disappearance as proof of fear on the part of his Nazi cohorts, and of their unwillingness to risk any danger to themselves by making an effort on behalf of their friend.
Our men at the airfield were another source of information. I instructed Klein and Adi to inform me immediately about any unusual occurrences there, any tightening of inspection, or any departure from routine. Their regular reports demonstrated that there were neither special supervision nor searches of departing planes. Everything was normal, another indication that the authorities were not looking for Eichmann.
During those last feverish days in Israel I had looked through the files of all the war criminals who were believed to have escaped to South America. In particular, I delved into the dossier of Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor whose frightful cruelty was described by all survivors of the death camp. He was in charge of the selections, the sorting out of the new arrivals at the camp; with a casual wave of the hand, he decreed who would go to the gas chambers immediately and who would be sent to die a slower death by forced labor. The horrifying acts of brutality he perpetrated on the sick, the women, the children, were notorious; of all the evil figures who played principal parts in the macabre drama of the attempt to wipe out the Jewish people, he was conspicuous for his abominable enjoyment of his role as death’s messenger.
Our information had never been checked, but it was reported that Mengele was living at present – or in the not too distant past – in Argentina, in a suburb of Buenos Aires. I had resolved from the very beginning that if I had the chance I would try to check up on this arch-butcher. In fact, when Zvi Zohar, our ‘travel agent’ in Europe, had told me that, by his calculation, it would cost a fortune to send a special plane to take Eichmann to Israel, I had said, To make the investment more worthwhile, we’ll try to bring Mengele with us as well.’
Everything we knew about this man was written in my notebook, in a personal code which only I could decipher (and even I had some difficulty). Now, during that unenterprising – though by no means inactive – period preceding the arrival of the plane, with all the preparations for transporting Eichmann at an advanced stage, I decided to do something about Mengele.
Circumstances were not particularly favorable. Most of my men were tied to the safe house, and even during their free time they could leave the place only after dark. The others were busy with the flight operation, while I was spending seventeen or eighteen hours a day in Buenos Aires cafés, keeping appointments with the tenants of Tira, listening to reports from the road-reconnaissance detail, briefing our representatives at the airfield, and giving directions to the documentation workers and newspaper readers. But the thought that Mengele might be hiding not far from us wouldn’t let me rest. It was clear from the outset, however, that I had to stick to one principle: notwithstanding my strong desire to trace Mengele, I dared not take a step that might endanger our primary objective, Operation Eichmann.
The day I visited the safe house I asked Kenet to question Eichmann about Mengele. I told him not to ask if he knew Mengele or where he was hiding, but to tell him that we knew the man was in Buenos Aires and that he must give us the exact address.
Eichmann’s response wasn’t very encouraging. He didn’t disclaim acquaintance with Mengele, but he said he didn’t know where he was and had never heard whether he was in Argentina or anywhere else in South America. Eichmann simply refused to say more, and to justify his refusal he told Kenet he didn’t want to betray his friends. I regarded his reply as confirmation of two things: that Mengele was not far away and that he and Eichmann had been in contact.
When Kenet continued to press him, Eichmann brought up another argument in support of his refusal: he was afraid, he said, of what might happen to his wife and children. We didn’t quite know what he meant by this remark. Was he afraid that if he gave Mengele away revenge would be taken on his wife and children? Or was it that he feared no one would be left to take care of them financially?
I told Kenet to promise Eichmann that we would undertake his family’s support if he would give us Mengele’s address. But all our urgings and promises were of no avail. My impression was that he went into a panic when we demanded Mengele’s location, and I felt that his obduracy stemmed not from any sense of loyalty but from sheer funk.
We put no further pressure on him, as I was interested in securing his maximum cooperation during the departure from Argentina and flight to Israel. Consequently, we confined ourselves to persuasion and material promises. Eventually Eichmann revealed that Mengele had been in Buenos Aires until a little while ago and that he had been living in a boardinghouse run by a German woman named Jurmann.
I needed more men if I wanted to deal with Mengele. Of the members of the task force only Ilani might be able to give me part of his time; and when Shalom Dani heard about the new assignment he demanded that I allow him to take part in it. But these two were not enough -I had to have more, especially people who spoke Spanish.
I asked Ilani to send me Meir Lavi, the man who had acted as our liaison the night of the capture. Meir and his wife had emigrated from North Africa to Israel in 1955. They joined a kibbutz, and from there he was sent to the Hebrew University for a bachelor’s degree in Hebrew literature and Jewish history. In 1958 some close relatives invited them to one of Argentina’s neighboring countries, and they had stayed on to live there. Ilani had met Meir when they were both in Buenos Aires before and had suggested him for the liaison job. After that night I had asked Meir to stand by in Buenos Aires in case we needed him again, and he and his wife were waiting for a message from Ilani that they were free to go. But I decided to mobilize them again.
He came to meet me at a café and I asked him how much Spanish he and his wife knew and if he thought they could get away with posing as natives. I was thinking of having them rent a room at Mrs. Jurmann’s boardinghouse.
Meir impressed me as being an intelligent person who would undoubtedly be able to carry out the assignment successfully. Unfortunately, neither he nor his wife had sufficient command of Spanish to convince anybody they were Argentines. I wanted them, with the help of photographs I woul
d give them, to find out at the boardinghouse – which was apparently considered a safe refuge for wanted Nazis – if Mengele still visited there. However, I was afraid that the appearance of a foreign couple on the scene might look suspicious.
I asked Meir if he knew another couple who could stay at Pensión Jurmann and give the impression of being authentic Argentineans. He did – an Israeli couple, Neomi and Hilel Pooch, also kibbutzniks, whom he had met on several occasions in the country where he lived. They had been given long leave to enable Hilel to attend to family affairs after his father took ill. Neomi was born in Buenos Aires and Hilel in the country where he was spending his leave. After they were married they had lived in the Argentine capital until they emigrated to Israel.
Meir said that his friends were absolutely trustworthy and reliable. I asked him to fetch them. I explained that the affair couldn’t wait and they must come at once, regardless of family or business considerations.
The following morning Hilel Pooch was sitting opposite me in my ‘on duty’ café. One look was enough to tell me he was the man I wanted. He spoke Spanish fluently and looked exactly like an average Argentinean. He had heard of Mengele but didn’t know much about him. I told him we had information that this sadist was in Buenos Aires, and we were trying to locate him. He said he was prepared – without any reservations – to undertake any assignment that had to do with Mengele.
I introduced him to Shalom Dani, who would be giving him his instructions. That day Shalom reconnoitered the well-to-do district, Vicente López, where the house Mengele was reported to be living in was situated. Using only a map, asking no one for directions, he found the place. It was an isolated villa on a narrow lane, with a well-tended lawn surrounded by a white picket fence. At one side there was an entrance for vehicles and at the other steps for pedestrians.
In the evening Shalom took the Poochs to Vicente López and showed them the house. He told them to roam around the area and try to find out, in a careful roundabout way, who lived there and what sort of people they were.
